Review: 'Tangled: Queen for a Day' rules over all

Posted Thursday, December 14, 2017 at 2:35 PM Central

by John Couture

As we noted earlier this year, Tangled the Series was a worthy addition to Disney's ever-growing animated empire. At the time, Tangled Before Ever After was simply a bridge between the movie and a new TV series, but now that the first season is winding down, it's pretty clear that Tangled the Series is a force all its own.

My daughter has been in love with the series from the first frame, so the opportunity to review Tangled: Queen for a Day allowed me to be a hero in my daughter's eyes. We sat down to watch the show and it was a great hour or so of father-daughter bonding that doesn't come along as often as I wish it would.

Disney does a great job at providing a top-notch experience in all of their properties and this is especially true for Tangled the Series. Many times, when a film property makes the transition to a series, the A-list cast is replaced by less costly alternatives. This is not the case with Tangled as both Mandy Moore and Zachary Levi reprise their characters despite both being very busy actors with other pressing projects.

This continuity, which Disney recently repeated with Frozen, is a great way to reward the audience for following the property from one medium to another. I always thought that when companies replaced key talent in older properties that it was distracting and just another indicator that they simply were trying to cash in for a quick payday.

Speaking of Frozen, the parallels between that movie and this special are hard to ignore. Besides the blizzard, there are certain story points that seemingly pop up between the two properties and this is something to keep an eye on going forward. Given that both titles are under the same roof, so to speak, there is bound to be some overlap, but I'm hopeful that they can continue to develop unique storylines to keep the series fresh and enjoyable.

Of course, my daughter didn't seem to notice or care about the bit of redundancy. After it was over, all she wanted to do is to watch it again. In particular, she enjoyed the four bonus shorts that were included on the DVD because this content was new to her and she devoured it over and over again.

Tangled: Queen for a Day is part of a new trend from Disney to release a small sampling of their TV series during the run to help hook new viewers. In the past, they waited for the end of a season to play on TV before releasing the entire season, but this new approach seems to have worked for new properties such as Vampirina. The real question is will Disney release the rest of the episodes later or will they continue to cherry-pick episodes to release in an event format?

Either way, I know that my daughter is hooked and the sheer number of times that she has watched this DVD in the last week is a testament to the success of the unconventional strategy.

Tangled: Queen for a Day is now available on DVD and the series is set to conclude its first season run on TV in early 2018.