The Mouse rules OK

I recently went to see the latest animated Disney film "Tangled", and - no surprises there - it was excellent. Not quite as good as films from the Disney Golden Age like "The Little Mermaid", "Aladdin", "The Beauty and the Beast" and "The Lion King", but just as good as those Disney films which have a very high quality indeed but stop just short of greatness, like "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" and "Tarzan". "Tangled" actually shares one plot strand with "Hunchback" (more of this later). A drawback is that the film is computer-animated. I enjoy computer-animated films, with those from Pixar in a league of their own, but for the real Disney fairy-tale magic I prefer good old two-dimensional animation. Yes, the settings are spectacular - especially, I reluctantly have to add, if you have those pesky 3-D glasses on - but the character animation still lacks the personal touch. The heroine Rapunzel's eyes are enormous while her mouth is small and rosebud-like: I think both she and the mutton-dressed-as-lamb-villainess Mother Gothel would have benefited from a classical-animation makeover.

But enough carping: it's a great film. The heroine is feisty. The hero Flynn Rider accepts the fact that, though he is the debonair, wordly-wise thief, it is more often than not he who is rescued by the charm and inventiveness of Rapunzel rather than the other way around - and he does it more stoically than I think most men would in real life. There is a heart-warming scene where Rapunzel finds common ground with an inn-full of ruffians over the importance of having a dream. I nearly choked up at the interlude where the country's king and queen - deprived of their little girl from childhood - make themselves ready to face their subjects on her birthday. The horse with a Javert complex is funny, and there are nice touches throughout - the dashing Flynn's real name, for instance, is Eugene Fitzherbert.

So what's my point with this puff-piece, exactly? The Disney people know what they are doing. They've been doing it for decades. No-one compares to The Mouse when it comes to creating that special animated magic. Deal with it.

Some multi-million-dollar-companies are more sneered at and mistrusted than others. Maybe it's got something to do with what you market. If you sell oil, or cars, or armaments, you are expected to be tough, smoke cigars and preferably have a scar running all the way from your right temple to the left side of your chin. But if you sell kiddy-friendly stuff, toughness is seen as hypocrisy. Oh yes, parents fume, the films may be full of gush about following your dreams and being true to yourself, but all Big Bad Disney really wants to do is to MAKE MONEY, by brainwashing little tots into nagging their poor parents into buying stuff. McDonalds suffers from a similar PR problem: my theory is that comparable fast-food chains such as Burger King have escaped much of the hostility directed towards McDonalds by not stressing the child-friendliness factor too much.

One effect of the hostility towards Disney was the hyping of the Shrek franchise at Disney's expense. Aha, the critics crowed, here we have the real future of animation: smart, sassy, computer-animated, and a de-construction of those hoary old fairy-tale clichés. Disney doesn't measure up to this, Disney is past it!

Yes, the Shrek films are funny (though the third wasn't up to much, and I haven't seen the fourth one yet). But they are not better than Disney films because of their "de-construction" of fairy-tales. In fact, it can be argued that it's the knowingness of the films, and the mean-minded side-swipes at Disney, which stop them from engaging you the way a good Disney film does. As I've argued before, if you want to be moving, you musn't be too afraid of sentimentality, and the Shrek-makers were too careful of their street-cred to risk going all out with feel-good or sob scenes. As for the "de-construction" bit, the Shrek films don't really add a new dimension to fairy-tales, they just invert them. We're not given the fairy-tale baddie's point of view, because Shrek, uncouth ogre though he is, is not really a baddie. Instead, Prince Charming and his ilk are the baddies - and it's up to Prince Charming to make the point that fairy tales don't supply "happily-ever-afters" to everyone.

Meanwhile, The Mouse waited, and finally had the last laugh. Disney chose to meet the Shrek attack, very effectively, by standing by their brand. "Yes, we do like fairy-tales just as they are: got any problem with that?" was the defiant message of the film "Enchanted", and it worked. "Tangled" follows suit, and the scene at the inn has the same feel-good factor as Giselle's number "How Does She Know" in Central Park.

There is plenty you can can criticise Disney for, but they know how to put heart into a film, and if this useful skill swells their pocket-books, then so be it. I for one am glad they haven't gone bust. A down-side to having such a dominating influence in animated pictures, though, is that they can become rather self-referential. The death of Tarzan's adopted gorilla-father in "Tarzan" didn't really move as much at it should, because we'd already had that kind of thing in "The Lion King". In "Tangled", there's a strong echo of "The Hunchback of Notre Dame": Rapunzel is kept in her tower with the same arguments as Quasimodo - that the world outside is cruel and dangerous - and when she later confronts her false parent figure, she is in just the same angry and defiant mood as Quasimodo in his similar confrontation with Frollo. Surely this was an opportunity missed: where's the sadness, where's the question "Did you ever love me?" And as for Mother Gothel, didn't she even feel a twinge of regret? It must be hard faking affection for years without ending up feeling at least a bit of it. But "Hunchback" never explored this issue, so "Tangled" doesn't either. Could do better, Disney. Remember your motto from "Meet the Robinsons": Keep moving forward!