Tangled Up in You Can’t Translate the Disney Magic to the Page

Hyperion Avenue

The story of Rapunzel has seen its share of adaptations over the years. Marissa Meyer’s Cress and Disney’s Tangled are the two that immediately come to mind, and while they’re both stellar in their own ways, one is a sci-fi reimagining and the other is a film that, while having modern comedy elements, is still firmly placed in a nondescript “historical” fantasy universe. I hadn’t seen this fairy tale adapted into a truly modern story—one taking place in the real world with no magic—until I came across Tangled Up in You, Disney’s YA contemporary retelling of Tangled from author duo Christina Lauren. And after reading, I’m starting to understand why adaptations of Rapunzel tend to keep things in a fantasy setting.

Part of Disney’s Meant to Be series, which reimagines its classic films as modern stories, Tangled Up in You centers on Ren Gylden, a 22-year-old farm girl attending school for the first time at Corona College. Her parents have raised her in a secluded bubble with few to no modern conveniences, but Ren settles in well with her classmates and campus life. When a class project on genealogy reveals that she may have long-lost biological relatives, Ren is hesitant to approach the subject with her parents for fear of them pulling her from school. She instead blackmails classmate Fitz into taking her on his spring break trip to Nashville so she can meet a man who may be her biological father. Fitz is less than thrilled to have her tag along due to her excessive optimism and unending stream of questions, but there’s budding romance between the two that threatens to turn both of their lives upside down.

As an adaptation with reimagined characters, I wasn’t expecting everything to be exactly the same as the movie, but so much gets lost in the update to a modern real-world setting. Pascal is now a cat and relegated to two little cameos, while Maximus is a finicky Ford Mustang that has barely any personality. These two are so central to why the movie is fun in the first place, and the dynamic is thrown off a bit by their lack of presence. The lovable ruffians from the Snuggly Duckling are now motorcycle thugs who are easily tamed by dad jokes in a scene that is uncomfortable and cringe. Ren’s parents, Gloria and Steve, give off immediate red flags by always being cold and aloof with Ren, and there’s barely any kind of familial love shown to her. Mother Gothel is a memorable villain because of how dramatic she is while also being manipulative and abusive; the way she acts with Rapunzel is a great example of how an abusive relationship is complex, and the abuser can do nice things for their victim or show affection from time to time. In taking out any kind of parental “love” they may have for Ren, Gloria and Steve just come off as stereotypical bad guys who have no depth and are just biding their time until they need to show up to cause problems.

Ren’s unconventional upbringing, like Rapunzel’s, is a big part of how she interacts with the world, but there are glaring inconsistencies with the rules Gloria and Steve have implemented that weaken their effectiveness. For example, they believe pop culture is dangerous, so they have no internet or cable TV and only allow Ren to use the internet at school for research, but they have a VCR and a hodgepodge of VHS tapes and allow Ren to watch things like Grease and The Goonies. Ren knows all about modern technology and what smartphones are despite never using one, but she becomes confused when her roommate suggests ordering something on Amazon, thinking the roommate means the rainforest. It could be argued that Gloria and Steve are hypocritical and don’t follow their own strict stipulations, but the Amazon example has me thinking this isn’t the case and the book is instead cherry-picking what Ren has been sheltered from so there can be cheap jokes thrown in.

In terms of writing, there is too much exposition, conveyed through both Ren’s and Fitz’s heads in third person limited perspective, and simply reading a summary of things that happen or getting backstory snippets through their thoughts grows stale very quickly. It’s almost like the author team didn’t want to spend too much time on the setup and wanted to get to the road trip part of the book as soon as possible, because the most we get from Ren’s experience at college is a student profile piece published on the school’s website, with only a handful of brief interactions with other students that are meaningless when none of these characters show up again later. Character development in general is severely lacking for everyone, with Fitz being the closest to a dynamic character with his progression from vengeful student to cinnamon roll, but even his storyline falls short of interesting with how slowly his past unfolds through his internal monologue.

The one bright spot is the romance between Ren and Fitz, because while their initial physical attraction is surface level and a bit eye-roll inducing, their chemistry develops nicely over the week they spend together. I freely admit to being a hopeless romantic, and as unimpressed as I was with the rest of the novel, even I was swooning when Fitz buys Ren a pack of sparklers to light for her birthday. (The sparklers are the replacement for the movie’s lanterns, and they’re also Ren’s earliest memory.) But even with cute moments and smoldering make-out scenes, the way the romance clearly has so much effort put into it compared to every other aspect makes the entire story weak. It’s difficult to fully enjoy Ren and Fitz falling in love when the side characters, the pacing, and the humor are all so lacking in comparison.

What disappoints me the most is that this is a pale imitation of the original Tangled and a far cry from a Rapunzel story in general. Maybe this is a fairy tale that works better when it isn’t grounded in reality, because long hair and a confining tower don’t fit well to a modern setting. Or maybe the essence of what made Tangled so much fun was lost in translation. I’m not sure what happened, but what I do know is that the story has lost not only its literal magic but its figurative magic too.

Tangled Up in You is available now. You’re better off rewatching Tangled instead.