Short reflections on Disney Shorts: Tangled Ever After

I have to confess that I am biased toward this one.  I love “Tangled”.  (You can read some of why in my blog “I’ve Got a Dream” from March 19, 2015.)  It is fun to watch Pascal and Maximus have their own adventure.  Like the other sequel in the collection, not much plot is involved, there is no character development, but it is a good time.

The short starts with Eugene (Flynn) and Rapunzel talking about their perfect wedding day.  As the short unfolds we see all the many, many ways in which the day went wrong.  And yet in spite of everything it is just what they wanted.  There is a note of truth in that.

I have done a lot of weddings over the years.  Honestly, they are a lot of work.  Families tend to be stressed, tempers are high, and everyone wants everything to be ‘perfect’.  Plans have been made weeks, months, or years in advance.  There is a vision of how things are supposed to go.  You can probably guess how often things go the way they are supposed to.  It is a sad truth that the weddings that are truly memorable are the ones when things go wrong.  Wardrobe malfunctions, out of control flower girls, awkward musical solos: these are the things that people talk about years after the actual wedding.  Whether those stories make us laugh or make us angry says a lot about who we are together.

While weddings take a lot of time and attention, they are not the point.  The marriage is the point.  How people react when things don’t go their way is telling.  The marriages that last are the ones where things go wrong and the couple rolls with it.  In fact, the more funny ‘disaster’ stories people have, it seems like the happier they are.  It makes no sense on the surface of things.  But the ability to move through disasters, both big and small, together while holding on to what is truly important is a skill.  So called ‘perfect’ days aren’t perfect because nothing goes wrong, they are perfect because all the important things happen and all the important people are there.  Perfection is over rated, but time together through both good and bad is always the way things are supposed to be.