Ten years of Tangled

I hadn't planned to watch my favorite movie of the last decade so soon after my last viewing, last December 30th, which was designed to confirm that it was, indeed, my favorite. I certainly hadn't planned to watch it at the hotel this weekend, even though I knew it would look amazing on my new projector.

What changed my mind is that on Friday afternoon, as I was multi-tasking between my third movie (a concert movie, so it was okay) and my personal correspondence, a friend sent me this article from the Onion's AV Club -- the "serious" side of the humor website. (Parody reviews only have a limited usefulness, I suspect.) 

The title of that piece had me at hello: "Years before Anna and Elsa, Tangled reinvigorated the Disney princess tradition." 

Celebrating the glory of Tangled on its ten-year anniversary and taking a swipe at Frozen? I was putty in the article's hands.

I couldn't line up the dates exactly for ten years, but I got close. I first saw the film on the half-day before Thanksgiving in 2010, which was Wednesday, November 24th. This viewing on Saturday night, in my primetime slot, was on Saturday, November 21st. It hardly seemed worth waiting until Tuesday to make it exactly ten.

In those ten years I've seen Tangled in a variety of different formats. The BluRay I bought soon after it was available had both 2D and 3D versions, and I've watched both -- the 3D version only once, since we had a 3D TV for only less than a year before moving to Australia in 2013. Saturday's viewing was my first on Disney+.

And my love for it just keeps growing. 

And yes, I am still discovering things for the first time on this, my seventh viewing. For example, I never before realized the double entendre in Mother Gothel's line to Rapunzel: "Rapunzel, let down your hair! I'm not getting any younger down here." That's just a cliched way of telling someone to hurry up, but in Mother Gothel's case it's literal -- she will be getting younger up there. 

Tangled is just chock full of that kind of thing. 

But because I've written about that love now a staggering 14 times on this blog -- including just yesterday -- I won't try to produce another Tangled essay today. I guess that's 13 times, actually, since the first post was before I saw it, when I was still skeptical about its possible merits. And that's just the times I actually tagged the movie's title in the post.

Still, I can't go without acknowledging the film's birthday on my blog. I wouldn't miss acknowledging a family member's birthday, and Tangled has, in a weird way, become a bit like family for me. It's maybe my older son's little brother, as he was born almost exactly three months before I first saw the movie.

Here's to another ten years, and another seven viewings in that time ... probably not that many this time, but I mightn't have though I'd watch the movie this many times in my life, let alone in its first decade, so all bets are off.