Brave – **
by Parker Mott on Jun.26, 2012, under Animation, Movie Reviews
Rating: PG
Run Time: 100 minutes
Our fire red-haired heroine Merida cocks her bow in "Brave".
Only in a blue moon would I consider Pixar to be in a slump. This renowned animation studio, ever since the rise of Woody and Buzz in 1995’s Toy Story, has generally produced quality animated films to young, dewey-eyed audiences and, miraculously to boot, the adults who were dragged in. Fusing adult themes with children entertainment has been Pixar’s cross to bear. But after the dreadful Cars 2 and the now woefully disappointing Brave Pixar currently has lost that star from their lapel.
Too bad. Because Brave, in its premise, holds merit. Typically accused for their lack of spunky heroines, Pixar’s newest entry features a pint-sized Highland princess named Merida (voiced by Boardwalk Empire’s Kelly Macdonald), who carries her own triumph. Pitted against the forced marriage arrangements of her stern mother Queen Elinor (v.b. Emma Thompson) and tough but ungainly father King Fergus (v.b. Billy Connolly), Merida flees to the forest only to realize, in the end, that family is where it is at.
It’s a familiar narrative for Pixar, whose past films like Up and WALLE involve a character’s desperate journey to achieve certain destiny. Merida’s is for her individuality, which is in itself a chivalrous act. So it’s a noble destination, but the journey itself lapses the way Cars 2 did: underdeveloped supporting characters, wearisome slapstick, and overdrawn dramatic incident. There’s zero elegance to the plotting, with a lot of situations tossed at the screen without a sense of any gentle and assuredly deep themes simmering beneath.
Pixar maintains, however, some of their usual strengths. Brave includes stellar voice acting, folkish visuals, and a wondrous score by Patrick Doyle, who uses harps, fiddles, and bagpipes to wrap us up in the Highland world of the 16th century. Our eyes won’t glaze over thanks to that visual-aural flair and they at least bring some energy to an otherwise formulaic and pat story.
What’s so typical about Brave is not necessarily what happens, but the emotions scattered through it. Directors Mark Andrews and Brenda Chapman, the former a right-hand man of Brad Bird and the latter a writer for Pixar’s corporate partner Disney, build this story with basic themes about family, hope, and individuality and, thus, we are only affected at the same calibre.
The supporting roles, such as Merida’s triplet brothers and her three potential husbands, only serve the plot for in-passing laughs to tide us over while Merida switches locations. Even Julie Walters voices a witch, who apparently plays a key role but turns to narrative pixie dust in mere seconds.
The defense of Brave, I suspect, will be Merida’s character. She’s resourceful, clever, and lively and fans may appreciate Pixar for creating a folk tale about a frizzled hair female warrior, who denies the age-old obligation to be some Scotsman’s princess. But Merida’s determination isn’t reflected in the efforts of Pixar, that’s script scrapes the two-dimensionality of recent Disney movies like the ho-hum Tangled and average DreamWorks pictures.
My hopes are still high for the Pixar brand. But truth be told: Brave is a mediocre animated film, especially for the much-beloved said studio. My prediction is that kids will enjoy Brave, because it is full of action, slim comedy, and colors that pop off the screen – literally, if you catch it in 3D. But adults will be bored, underwhelmed by Brave’s curious lack of depth and a mid-point character twist that will make you think – “what, that’s it?”. Put the bow away, Merida, this arrow has missed the mark.
June 26th, 2012 on 9:52 pm
I’ve got to say I completely disagree with you here. I’ve seen Brave twice now, on opening Friday and Saturday, and despite the ridiculously fast turnaround, I still enjoyed Brave the second time I saw it. Let me support my case:
Brave is easily the least “real” of Pixar’s movies. This might be strange given Pixar has made movies about monsters, superheroes, and talking cars, fish, and toys, but in each of those, we get the sense of entering a “slice of life;” it doesn’t really matter what happened before the story or after the credits roll, because there is neat resolution and the story is very self-contained. We don’t need to know about how Mike and Sully met, or how Lightning McQueen broke into the big times. What’s so touching about these movies isn’t the story, but the characters, and how human they seem (whether they’re bugs, robots, or grumpy old geezers).
Brave is completely different. First off, Brave is the only Pixar with “magic” and “fate.” This on its own makes it too fantastical for a typical Pixar “slice of (admittedly extraordinary) life.” In Brave, we are placed in a world with a past. And I’m not talking about the episode with Merida as a girl. I’m talking about a world with a mythology and legends that aren’t contained in the story. The highlands, beautifully rendered, are littered with old castles and monolithic magic circles that point to a distant past. And this is something that’s new for Pixar.
What I found most appealing about Brave was the total immersion. You understood the world, even if it was unfamiliar, because there are stories being told within the stories. This reminded me of two other Pixar movies that I list among my favourites: UP, with the boyhood opening pointing towards dreams of exploration, and Wall•E the robot working for thousands of years to clean the earth while the human race devolves into pudding. In both movies, you get the sense of something… more.
I personally really enjoyed the characters in Brave, because they fit in with this “more-ness.” The clan chiefs are proud of their heritage, of where their clans have come from and the trials and tribulations they’ve weathered. Once again, this adds a unique and new depth to a Pixar movie, where characters are always caught up in the moment (exception: Carl in UP, and even he abandons the past). The children, like Merida, are tired of this tradition and want to live their own lives. Young MacGuffin seems reluctant from the start. Young Macintosh’s priorities are not winning Merida, but putting on a good show for the girls. And Dingwall is so clueless any attempts to read him are useless. The time when they are all together at the feast is when they are happiest, and that’s because as of that moment, none of them are Merida’s groom, and therefore they are momentarily outside of tradition.
Visually, Brave was a masterpiece. The landscapes, every scene was so brilliant and beautiful. The hair, especially Merida’s was spellbinding. And just the way the characters moved was gorgeous and fluid. This I feel adds a whole new level of enjoyment to Brave; without a doubt, it is the most beautiful Pixar film yet.
It was these visuals that kept Brave enjoyable the second night in a row. The ruins especially reminded me of Jackson’s Middle Earth, which is littered in remnants of long-forgotten kingdoms. As I was watching Brave, I was swept up in the land itself, and like in LotR, I really got the sense that the characters were tiny little chess pieces moving across the board of time, directed by Fate. Was each Will O’ Wisp a former Scottish hero, a Braveheart or Mordu? Did the witch ever meet up with her sisters and talk to Macbeth (the stone circle reminded me of scenery from Roman Polanski’s interpretation of the Scottish Play)? Mordu himself, the mindless killer bear – how long has he suffered for seeking to change his fate?
I never once wondered where Woody came from, or how Marlin and his wife Coral met, or how Mr. Incredible grew into his powers. But I wondered about Fergus and the clan chiefs’ bravery fighting the vikings. I wondered who raised the magic circles and carved those stones, just as I wondered about who built those staues of former kings I saw in LotR.
Brave is not a typical Pixar movie. It’s much bigger. And in doing so, it’s not a story like any other Pixar before it; Brave is a legend. It’s in many ways so much bigger than anything Pixar has done before. And I believe they did a fantastic job.
***.5/****
June 27th, 2012 on 3:39 am
Ian, I am very glad you took this out of the movie. Maybe you have some deep (perhaps undiscovered?) love for Disney. Because when you say this is Pixar’s first film with “magic” and “fate” is a misnomer. Pixar is coupled with Disney and the latter feeds off those 2 themes. Hence why I felt Pixar had retreated to Disney’s roots – but, to your contrary, for the worst. I agree completely on the visuals, but somewhere along the way you seemed to appreciate the stories and characters more than I did. I think you’ve confused “Story” with “Plot” because the former is essential to everything, including complimenting the “characters”, which you deemed the emphasis of the film. Where I think your argument contracts is in, well, over-selling the very story Pixar constructs here. The characters are all lively and amiable and generate warm-feelings, but pay attention to the screenwriting. All they’re really in for is for the dialogue of these characters is to generate slapstick that will appeal to the comedic taste buds of the child audience. Which is fine, but I’m not 8 years old (not to say if you laughed you are 8 years old, just my opinion). I don’t see their characters employed properly to develop the themes and, when they do, the script only allows those themes to stretch so far. I found the themes pat and could be summarized in a brief single sentence. Which is, ultimately, why I don’t think Brave has sweep and scope as you claim. Without the textual depth you can’t really get by on the visual depth, in which I mean visual “scope”. But blah blah blah, I’ve written my review so there’s no point on me rambling. We disagree and that’s the beauty of debate. In the end, you win because you had a better time than me, lol. Anyway thanks for commenting (feel free to give me the last word) and you should post those comments in a personal review somewhere. You write cogently. Cheers bud.