Tangled The Series : Queen For A Day Review
Its the end of the year, Disney XD shows are now entering their mid-season break from Milo Murphy, Spider Man and Duck Tales. But over at Disney Channel, one show is still going on strong with a bang, Tangled The Series is nearing its mid-season break with a full blown 45 minute special with 2 new songs from acclaimed musicians Glenn Slater and Alan Menken.
The plot of the special revolves around Rapunzel taking care of the kingdom of Corona while her parents go on a 2 day honeymoon outside of the kingdom leaving her in charge. But elsewhere in a city outside of Corona, the spike rocks from the pilot of Tangled the Series emerge from their plot hibernation, causing damage all over the city, something that Varian’s father covers while talking with the King after the rocks begin spawning in Varian’s lab encasing his father in an orange variation of the rocks caused by Varian’s chemical attempt to subdue the rocks.
Varian, on the other hand hates the fact that his father lied about the city doing fine and requests that Rapunzel should come help him deal with the rocks since she had experience with them since the stones’ magic caused her long blonde hair to return back in the pilot. But thanks to her actions earlier in the special causing chaos all over the kingdom from an infestation of cats to deaf barbers ruining haircuts on top of a sudden blizzard caused by the spike rocks that struck the kingdom, she tearfully refuses to go help him wanting to tend to her kingdom first.
The third storyline of the special deals with the storm thrusting the royal carriage into a nearby cliffside where the King and Queen are stranded, Maximus returns to the kingdom to seek the help of Eugene, Lance and the Snuggly Duckling thugs to get them out. Its a lot to take in for a 45 minute special.
The animation is pretty standard ,akin to a regular episode of Tangled the Series so I wont be covering it for this review. The real stand-outs from the special are its plot and music. The special features two new songs : I’ve Got This sung by Mandy Moore and Let Me Make You Proud by Jeremy Jordan. The first song is nothing really special but some of the visual humour in it is quite amusing with all the complaints from the townspeople. But the one that stands out is Let Me Make You Proud sporting strong visuals reminiscent of Frozen’s Let It Go number that explores Varian’s determination to right his wrongs and show what he can really do.
The plot is pretty dramatic dealing with unusual magic entering the kingdom and causing consequences for numerous characters including the first on-screen death of a non villian character in a Disney TV show for quite a long while. The special also sets off numerous plot points for future arcs dealing with the spike rocks and the origin of the blizzard which was briefly covered by a elder character in the middle of the special.
While the special is a bit of a step down compared to Tangled Ever After, its a decent story that could have easily been covered within a 22 minute episode if they removed one of the three plot lines. Can’t wait to see how all of this gets covered once regular episodes of Tangled the Series resume next Sunday.
RATING : 7 out of 10