Overall, Tangled: The Series - Queen for a Day is more than just a throwaway episode trying to snag a quick buck. It’s good character development with a sprinkle of sincerity and humor to make the story more than just another animated tale with a typical template.
The more and more I watched the movie Tangled, the more I was entertained by its wit and humor. The series is just as good.
Official Synopsis
The fate or Corona hangs in the balance when Rapunzel faces the ultimate test in “Queen for a Day.”
When the King and Queen leave town, Rapunzel is set to lead. However, when a blizzard threatens to destroy Corona, the Princess is faced with some tough decisions.
The balance of sincerity and humor is amazing in anything Tangled. The creators of this show certainly know how to maintain that balance that the film established a few years back. This time around, in Tangled: Queen for a Day, we once again get that mix of drama and laughs. It takes a lot to make an animated piece more than just a one-dimensional journey through a typical cartoon template of fun-crisis-resolution.
Without further delay, let’s get right into it.
The story starts with the same light-hearted humor by reminding us who the players are in the path laid out for us. Rapunzel is first established through mousy-motions of learning through her father and mother, king and queen of Corona, and her trying to get ready to take over once the royal duo is retired. The first hard lesson for Rapunzel is running the kingdom in the royals absence. The king and queen are on their way to the country side to celebrate their anniversary for a couple of days, leaving Rapunzel in charge of the kingdom while they’re gone. Helping her to maintain the kingdom, as well as keep the chaos of Corona’s natives down, her true love Flynn is ready to play the demo role of king…ya know, to feel out the position when it opens. As the first act ends, Rapunzel and Flynn get more than they bargained for, as a mysterious set of rocks begin to appear around the kingdom, which become a terrible danger to the citizens, as well as a nasty blizzard blowing through that Corona had only experienced once in their history. Things are getting messy by the end of the first act.
The quick pace of the show really gets established in the first act. You get a nice refresher of all the characters, as well as some real stakes set in the ground for what could happen should the kingdom get turned upside down due to weather and rocks. You also get some secondary characters that matter, an alchemist boy trying to find a solution to the rock problem, and some serious drama of an inexperienced queen in waiting. There’s a lot to take in during the first act and it does a fantastic job of organizing and juggling it all.
The second act begins with the weather getting worse, the king and queen in peril and no solution in sight to the rocks that keep making their way across the kingdom. The problems are just building and building for the queen to be. There are side stories created and even an overwhelming sense of panic with Rapunzel. The panic becomes thicker when villagers begin to have problems and the kingdom really does start to spiral towards complete collapse.
The second act ends at the peak of panic and complete collapse. Again, there are some real stakes established in the story, especially in the second act, and it keeps you at the edge of your seat until the third act is revealed. Rapunzel does her best to keep the kingdom together, while depending on her friends, especially Flynn, to help accomplish this. It’s a story of teamwork and making hard decisions, which isn’t normal at all for Disney cartoons, but nonetheless a welcomed sentiment.
As we always do, we won’t actually get into the third act, as we don’t want to reveal spoilers and make the entire point of watching the show, well, pointless, but rest assure that the third act does end in an Empire Strikes Back sorta way, where you know there is going to be loss with the victory. It’s an impressive piece of writing and conclusion and works only because the actors can deliver the goods by the end and because the story was all well planned/developed.
