As a fan of the original Tangled, I was curious where they were going with this series. Happy to say if you're a Tangled fan the series follows the film almost seamlessly.
First there's the TV movie, Tangled: Before Ever After, which I personally didn't care for too much. It was a bit too hammy and moralistic, low on humor and cliché. "Stubborn princess disobeys father. Father doesn't understand stubborn princess." We've seen this story play out so many times.
Now the SERIES on the other hand really gets things going. I would still recommend watching Before Ever After because you get explanations for some major plot elements of the series.
First there's the humor. I think Tangled the Series is really funny. It's anchored by being set in a renaissance / medieval period and it manages to work the period into its humor, which is really great because it reminds me of things like The Princess Bride or Monty Python and the Holy Grail, other films that did well with not taking the setting seriously. That's a huge plus for Tangled.
Then there's the voice cast which is awesome since it's being helmed by the original voices. You never get a sense that you're not seeing Rapunzel or Flynn being the way they are, and the voices really help with that. In fact one of the best things about Tangled is that we get to see more of Flynn and especially Rapunzel. As much the film developed her character, it was still limited by the runtime. The series really fleshes her out and we have a more defined idea of who Rapunzel is. Flynn was always flashy and we get a lot more of Flynn, the arrogant side and the deeper "Eugene" part of him. Although we really should be calling him Eugene since that's what he goes by in the series. There's also a new character who is just fantastic, Cassandra. The banter being Cassandra and Eugene is one of the running jokes that the series plays with really well. As a trio, they work really well together.
It's also nice to see Rapunzel and Eugene "dating" in a sense. Since the film went by so fast, we have more of a chance to see what their relationship is like.
So far I've been really loving this. It's like an expansion pack of the original movie - more insight into the kingdom, more insight into the characters and a bigger setting to play around with.
