Tangled

Tangled is a genuinely gleeful, optimistic, cheery, emotional, funny, and whimsical family musical that not only packs the goods with its action, but also with its investing story. Screenwriter Dan Fogelman could have easily just made this a film about a girl with long hair and not done too much with the source material, but he rose to the occasion, above and beyond.

It’s a marvelously written film and tells a story that will be legitimately gripping for viewer of all ages, genders, and ethnicities. Even if you have never been in any situation similar to any of the characters in this film, you’ll still find yourself relating to it in at least one way or another. It’s magical how the best scripts are able to do that, and Tangled does that excellently.

There’s also, of course, plenty of jokes along the way. Sometimes, Disney jokes can just be downright lame. It can be difficult to sit through some of them as an adult because they were very clearly aimed towards small children, but thankfully, the jokes in Tangled are enjoyable even for the older viewers.

In fact, this is probably one of the funniest Disney films ever made. There were a couple of scenes in particular that had me genuinely laughing from the chest. Who would have thought that a Rapunzel film of all things would be capable of producing such laughs?

Beauty and the Beast

In this classic tale, the Beast has a magical mirror that he can look into and see anything in the world that is happening. One doesn’t need a magic mirror to see that everywhere in the world, Disney is going to touch hearts and kindle spirits with this enchantingly splendid animation.

Steeping with magical moments and bursting with vitality, this scrumptiously grand movie will be one of this year’s great performers, and every seventh year hence it will continue to cast its wondrous spells over as-yet-unborn viewers.

The movie narrative is propelled not only by the sound moral that “beauty is only skin deep” but also, in this marvelous case, its energy flows naturally from the independent fiber of the Beauty, a comely French countrygirl named Belle who takes charge of her own life and doesn’t pine away for a Prince Charming to lift her to her dreams.

Graceful yet spirited, Beauty and the Beast follows a grand and noble story line, but this path is ever respective of the silly side trails and the quirky tributaries that are the special stuff of everyday life. Under directors Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise’s glimmering guidance, personality-plus is suffused into every frame: Everyday kitchenware bounds to loony life; castles and village streets conjure up emotional reactions, while more issues swirl with contradictory complexity.

The technical work is masterful, with all contributors in harmony with the film’s splendid vision. Highest praise to art director Brian McEntee and his background artistic supervisor Lisa Keene, whose detailed and richly hued scenery conveys with precise understatement the rich tones of the story.

Moana

Princesses come in all shapes, sizes, and colors, though Disney’s latest addition to its ever-growing gallery of empowered female heroines — Moana (voiced by Hawaiian actress Auli’i Cravalho), the daughter of a Pacific Islands chieftain — doesn’t see herself as a princess per se. Even so, as her friend, the Polynesian demigod Maui (Dwayne Johnson), is quick to point out, “If you wear a dress and have an animal sidekick, you’re a princess.” Thankfully, while Moana is going through a pretty serious identity crisis in the new animated movie that bears her name, Walt Disney Animation Studios has resoundingly solved its own, delivering a musical adventure that’s a worthy addition alongside “The Little Mermaid” and “Aladdin,” two now-classic cartoons also brought to life by directors John Musker and Ron Clements, whose gift for hand-drawn animation translates beautifully to the realm of CG here.

More than “Tangled,” more than “Frozen,” “Moana” keeps with the tradition that made Disney the leader in animated fairy and folk tales, and yet, showing a thoroughly modern touch, it’s the first to do so without so much as suggesting a love interest. Sure, there are men in Moana’s life, big hulking men shaped like Samoan rugby players with egos of a similar size: Maui wants mortals to adore him, and Moana’s father enforces a rule that no one from their tribe is allowed to venture beyond the shallow reef that encircles their island, Motunui. But the only force Moana answers to is the ocean itself, which behaves quite unexpectedly in an early scene, pulling back the water’s edge so that she can amble in over her head, peering at the sea life all around her as if staring into a giant aquarium.

For older audiences, especially those who came of age during the era of “Beauty and the Beast,” much of what follows will seem like Disney boilerplate, but that would be understating the shrewd yet significant ways Musker and Clements innovate. There’s the welcome cultural aspect of the female explorer, of course, plus the fact that the film gives its heroine a healthy, more realistically proportioned physique (reminiscent of the Hawaiian characters in “Lilo & Stitch”), rather than forcing Moana into the mold of past princesses.

As princess movies go, this one broadens the studio’s horizons, and as Moana herself sings in the film, “no one knows, how far it goes.”

Mulan

Gorgeously animated and stirringly told, Disney's "Mulan" is a timeless story that will delight kids and divert adults with its sweeping scope, emotional intimacy and screwball humor. And it may do for the sword what "Cinderella" did for the glass slipper-create a symbol of female transformation-except in this case one that has less to do with physical appearance than personal accomplishment.

Based on the 2,000-year-old Chinese legend of a young woman who disguises herself as a man to join the army and save her homeland from an enemy incursion, "Mulan" is a brazen departure from the traditional girl-centric cartoon fare about women whose chief heroic accomplishments involve falling in love. Unlike "Anastasia," "The Little Mermaid," "Pocahontas," "Beauty and the Beast," "Snow White" and a host of antecedents, "Mulan" features a heroine whose strength, discipline, courage and self-sacrifice-instead of her beauty-win the honor of her family and country.

The movie narrative is propelled not only by the sound moral that “beauty is only skin deep” but also, in this marvelous case, its energy flows naturally from the independent fiber of the Beauty, a comely French countrygirl named Belle who takes charge of her own life and doesn’t pine away for a Prince Charming to lift her to her dreams.

Throughout Mulan's adventure, she is chaperoned by an economy-size dragon named Mushu (Eddie Murphy). Resembling an orange gecko with a Fu Manchu mustache, Mushu is a motor-mouthed adviser and one-man peanut gallery (až la "Aladdin's" genie) and provides many of the film's funniest lines. However, Murphy's contemporary humor and jive delivery may take a bit of getting used to in the historically meticulous context of ancient China, and one bit where he steps into a Pentecostal minister shtick is almost too jarring.

More to the point, though, "Mulan" is a rip-snorting saga of heroism beyond stereotype. It has all the epic scale of "Lawrence of Arabia," combined with the emotional virtuosity of "Bambi." It is that rarest of cartoons, a fantasy that may actually make you believe in the unbelievable.