Video Brinquedo have been branded The Asylum of animation for good reason. Their output is consistently awful, with the exact same flaws in everything they've done so far with no improvement whatsoever.
Just to say, if being asked why keep watching, the answer is simple. Curiosity. There is something somewhat compulsive about their badness, but it compels anybody to see what else they've done and compare, also to see if they've made anything worthwhile. The answer is that none of them are, and while some are worse and more intelligence insulting than others the amateurish (and that's being kind) quality is consistent. 'Rapunzel' is to me one of their worst, it insults the intelligence and is one of their worst-looking animations as well. That it does a disservice to the famous story is the least of its problems, with it being clear that it was trying to put fairy-tale clichés and such on its head and even manages to do that in a lazy way.
As to be expected, the animation is some of the studio's most hideous. In Flash rather than CGI (both of them hard animation styles to do but CGI from belief being more expensive), everything that makes their animation so ugly can be seen in the animation here. Very stiff character designs (the witch is especially poorly drawn), even flatter colours, static and less than fluid backgrounds and lots of times where it repeats itself shows a sign of sheer laziness than budget limitations. Seeing as films/shows/episodes have done wonders with low budget, the budget or lack of it is not an excuse, seeing as it looks even worse than their computer animated offerings like 'Ratatoing' in a less expensive and more time-consuming, perhaps, animation style here.
'Rapunzel's' music sounds cheap, as if it had been lifted out of a repetitively scored fantasy-themed Bingo game, both in orchestration and how it's recorded, and seems disconnected from what it should be matching on screen in the animation, instead the two clash awkwardly.
Writing once again is appalling, and doesn't even have unintentional humour value, with clunky and draggy exposition and the irrelevant chatter and the more senselessly nonsensical parts give a real excessive long-winded quality. Adults will find it too juvenile and even kids will feel like it went well overboard trying to dumb down to them. Again a big problem when so dialogue-heavy. One cannot mention 'Rapunzel' without talking about the narration, one really does have to have a strong stomach to not cringe or feel sick hearing the narration over-explain everything in a rambling way, clumsily try to break genre and story clichés and do absolutely nothing new with any of it or the delivery of the most generic-sounding names for people and places one could cook up.
Despite the original story itself being somewhat of a slight one, it is a charmer and does have a lot of emotion, plus at least it had a story. In Video Brinquedo's offering the story is practically non-existent for over two thirds of it, the rest of it being clumsily written and cringe-worthy exposition that takes forever to trudge through. By the time any glimpse of a story resembling anything one is familiar with appears we're over half an hour in or so. If one wants to do something with a story or put their own spin, at least do it with spark and passion, this felt very half-hearted and the ideas really weren't that new either.
The characters on top of being hideously animated are both bland and irritating, a few unintentionally creepy. The voice acting is lifeless or unbearably obnoxious, like they didn't even try or even want to be there, it was almost like they were bribed or would do anything to get some quick cash.
Overall, when R.A.P's song (when first introduced to her) is the only thing if you marginally stomach, and that is saying practically nothing, one knows they are in deep water. 1/10 Bethany Cox
