Recently my husband and I went to see TANGLED. We'd both been hearing good things and so were relatively excited.

I left not feeling like I'd wasted two hours of my life, but with a strong feeling of deja vu.

First, I should say, there were some charming things about the movie. Most of these centered on a horse named Maximus and a running joke about frying pans.

Also, I think the villain, while a bit two-dimensional, is interesting and perhaps a bit too realistic. She's a self-absorbed and manipulative woman which is sadly something more and more commonly seen in real life. She's also an interesting satire of the pathologically over-protective parent.

Unfortunately, the rest of the movie felt more familiar than engaging, starting with the characters. First, the princess, Rapunzel. She's a sheltered girl with big dreams to see a world she's been kept from, full of wide-eyed wonder and spunk in equal measures.

Basically, she's a blond version of Ariel from the LITTLE MERMAID living an extreme version of the Jasmine life from ALADDIN. Granted, I liked both of those movies, but they came out in a different time and both characters referenced possessed more depth, or seemed to in the eyes of my younger self. Even if they did not, they existed in a different time, a time when they were less stereotypes and more real characters.

Much like Tolkien did elves first and then they became ubiquitous and trite, the standard Disney Princess template no longer serves as enough to engage a viewer. At least not this one.

The secondary characters fared even worse. There is the required love interest who, in this case, is a dashing thief who is, of course, at his core, a good guy looking for love.

I understand this isn't his story, but even he acknowledges he's too flat with the assertion "I don't really do back story."

Neither did the writers of this movie. Instead, they grabbed Aladdin and Tramp for LADY AND THE TRAMP, blended them slightly, and glossed it all over with a bit of meta-humor.

And that tactic might have worked for this movie if it had been consistent in it's self-deprecation, but instead it tries too hard to be earnest and then uses humor to deflect from its failings. It doesn't tend to work as a strategy for self-conscious teens and it's an even less effective tactic for this film.

The supporting cast also echoes other Disney films. There are the ruffians and thugs that not only play the same role as the warriors from MULAN, but might as well be the same characters in different armor. And the chameleon, whom I liked because it's an animal and I am me, is Carpet. Not even a blending. It's Carpet from Aladdin. Or Cricket from Mulan. Really there's little difference between them and Chameleon is just another iteration on the theme of the non-speaking, intelligent side-kick.

Basically, what it comes down to is that while this was an okay movie to watch, it did nothing new. Maybe not all movies need to, but really, this one didn't even feel like it was trying. It was a paint-by-numbers Disney movie, the plug and play of animation.

My husband said, and I think he got this exactly right, "It was a movie made by someone that knew Disney movies were popular, but not why. It had the same elements but none of the soul."

For me it was like someone putting a jigsaw puzzle together in reverse. They had all the pieces, but instead of a beautiful picture, what they got was a stretch of brown cardboard.

Sad that these days even Disney is turning out Disney-clone movies.

Thank the gods for Pixar.