Brave
BRAVE is Pixar's first feature with a female main character, and Merida isn't your typical princess. Brought up in the Scottish kingdom of DunBroch, Princess Merida (voiced by Kelly Macdonald) would rather sling her arrows than learn the proper etiquette befitting a future queen. When the realm's three other clans arrive to present their leaders' firstborn sons as potential suitors for betrothal, Merida rebels against her regal mother, Queen Elinor (Emma Thompson), and runs away to the forest. Following a will o' the wisp, Merida encounters a witch (Julie Walters) who conjures a magical cake to "change the queen." But when the queen eats the magical treat, it's not her mind that changes; she (possible spoiler alert!) transforms into a giant black bear -- exactly like the bear that took the "Bear King" Fergus' (Billy Connolly) leg a decade earlier. With her mother a bear and her father on the hunt, Merida must find out how to break the spell before her mother stays a bear forever -- or worse, is killed by the king and his men.
Brave movie review
For one, the film is visually stunning. Our heroine, Merida, is a brash, young woman who takes after her barbarian father more than her prim and proper mother. She bears her father's curly red locks in a gigantic mane of hair that speaks volumes about her character while simultaneously standing as a technical achievement in CG design. Her horse gallops through stunning vistas lit by brilliant sunsets. Like everything Pixar makes, Brave is simply a lot of fun to look at.
It would be wrong to spoil too many of Brave's plot details, so I'll stick to the basics. Merida is to be married off to one of three possible suitors who all come to the kingdom to present themselves and compete. Her mother, the queen, has been grooming her for this moment since childhood, but Merida has always fought against it. As the day approaches, the conflict between the two comes to a head, and Merida's attempt to escape her fate comes with some unexpected repercussions. To fix it, she has to mend the bond between herself and her mother, and in true Disney fashion, they'll learn something about each other along the way.
That plot feels more Disney Princess than Pixar's typical brand of off-the-wall creativity. There's a child-like, whimsical quality to many of Pixar's ideas that's missing from Brave. Gone is the singular concept that makes their usual work so approachable. Toys, fish, cars, superheroes, robots... there isn't one word to describe Brave. Feminism? Perhaps, but that's more of a subtext, like the environmentalism messages in Wall-E. Brave's main focus is a mother and daughter working out their issues, and while it's perfect family film territory, it's missing that Pixar secret sauce.
Three films in, the Toy Story series still found brilliant humor in simple observations about toys. That's Pixar at their most basic and effective, and yet that whimsical humor has been maintained in their more complex fare. Wall-E, Up, Ratatouille; they all had that same brilliant sense of humor.Brave is a very funny film, but again, it's not Pixar's typical brand of humor. It's more in Dreamworks' wheelhouse, sticking to jokes that are more slapstick and lowbrow. Again, it's well-done and I laughed repeatedly, but it lacked that wit I expect from Pixar.
Brave doesn't feel like a Pixar film. Whether that will bother you or not depends on how highly you regard their previous films. But even if it's more Dreamworks or Disney than Pixar, it still manages to entertain. It just isn't as magical as I expected.
Brave Trailer
Enjoy of watching =)
