Well, it turns out that turkey isn't the only thing I'm eating this Thanksgiving season. And I couldn't be happier about it. I've been pretty strong in expressing my frustration with Disney's marketing campaign for
Rapunzel Tangled, going so far as to predict that the film would be yet another disappointment for the "new and improved" Walt Disney Animation Studios, regardless of the movie's actual quality (to be fair, even Disney seemed to be
hedging its bets about how the movie would perform ahead of its release). Man, was I ever wrong.
Tangled opened this past Thanksgiving weekend to
a very robust $68.7 million for the 5-day holiday weekend and $48.8 million for the three-day weekend. That three-day total was just
barely behind box office behemoth
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I, resulting in an unexpectedly close box-office race
. Just as importantly,
Tangled received
an extremely rare CinemaScore from audiences of "A+." Clearly, people really like this movie and positive word of mouth should sustain the movie in the weeks ahead. If
Tangled continues to perform well through Christmas, Walt Disney Animation will finally have the one thing that has stubbornly eluded them since the Pixar team of John Lasseter and Ed Catmull took over in 2006 -- a Pixar-sized hit.
