A Brave New World – Movie Review #1

By Jonathan Gonzalez on June 28, 2012

Image taken from the IMDb article on Brave

Pixar and Disney took brave and bold steps when they released their latest animated collaboration, Brave, directed by Mark Andrews and Brenda Chapman. The film is a fresh and lighthearted take on a fairy tale coupled with impressive animation, starring the voice of relatively unknown Kelly Macdonald (Harry Potter geeks may know her as the actress who played Helena Ravenclaw in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2) as the wild Scottish Princess, Merida.

Pixar is no stranger to the dominant, driven, and decisive female protagonist. Multiple tom-girls have played leading roles in Pixar films since Toy Story 2, when Jessie the Cowgirl played the Cowboy, Woody’s, opposite role and love interest. More recently Pixar films continued to play off of strong female leads with Eve from Wall-E, Ellie in UP! and Colette from Ratatoullie, but Merida is by far the best written and portrayed female lead Pixar has put on the big screen since Dory in Finding Nemo. Merida is the perfect mix of clever, amicable, and brave, and lends just enough childish reality to the part to round off her character. It would be almost impossible not to root for Merida’s success throughout the film, although she is a bit of a brat, and has her moments of youth and stupidity. Her character flaws do not seem to matter in the long run though, and she learns her lesson in the end.

The plot is relatively simple: princess hates castle life and her control freak of a mother, and rebels against the expectations thrust upon her. Unfortunately, we’ve all seen this film before. Teenage rebellion stories are hardly a novel concept and the only distinguishable difference between this film and others that follow the same skeleton plot is that this version of the tale is set in Scotland amongst a horde of ravenous Vikings. Merida’s mother Elinor (voiced by Emma Thompson) is portrayed in the earlier part of the film as the stereotypical demanding and unyielding slave driver of a mother who forces her daughter into either doing things her way, or taking the highway. Understandably, after a disaster of an attempted shotgun (or bow point in this case) marriage, Merida opts to take the highway and runs away from home. On the other side of the family are Merida’s father and younger siblings. The father, Fergus the Bear King (voice by Billy Connolly), is yet another stereotype, in that he plays the role of the carefree and toothless (and leg-less) father figure that does not know how to discipline his children. Merida’s younger siblings are immediately shown to be a band of notorious trouble makers on an endless hunt for sweets. No cookie jar is safe from them, and their antics are a mixed bag of joyous laughs and clever unpredictability. The entire male side of the family, and in fact, every male figure in the movie save for the villain, is utilized as comic relief. In other words, this film is about women sorting out their problems while the men bungle theirs.

The worst part about the film though are the bears. On one hand, the villain is an evil bear named Mor’du who is supposed to symbolize the worst incarnation of Merida’s failings. The problem with this concept is that there is absolutely no explanation as to why Mor’du is a central element of the story. He simply seems to appear at random convenient times to terrorize the cast. While he does lend an important symbolic element to the plot, he does not do the normal things that villains do. He does not threaten the kingdom, does not take a special interest in seeing the doom of the protagonists, and he also does not directly figure in with the rest of the story’s main conflicts. He is simply a savage beast on the loose. It is almost as though Pixar made a great movie, but then realized that they did not have a villain, and tacked on Mor’du, adding a few lines here and a couple of jump scenes there. Had Mor’du been removed from the film entirely, there would have been no substantial difference in the plot, and therefore he should not have even been added.

On the other hand, half of Merida’s family turns into bears at some point during the movie (the king is already called the bear king, so I suppose it fits). In particular, Merida’s conflict with mother comes to a head when she meets a witch who gives her a spell to “change” her mother, so that she will not be forced to get married. Not knowing what the witch’s magic actually does, Merida accidentally transforms her mother into a bear, which becomes the queen’s vehicle for character development. The issue: we’ve also seen this movie before. It was a movie called “Brother Bear” that was originally produced by Disney (“Brother Bear” was apparently an obscure enough film for Pixar to condone plot stealing). In that movie, an Inuit man hunts down a bear, and is then transformed into one so that he can learn to be more in touch with nature. Queen Elinor as a bear faces many of the same issues as the protagonist in Disney’s other bear film. There is even a parallel comedic scene in each movie where the human-bear has to learn to catch fish with his/her claws. This egregious recycling of plot was a major disappointment, and in that aspect of the movie, the writers would have been better served by utilizing a few spurts of creativity and a drop of originality.

On the technical side, the animation in Brave is beautiful to say the very least. The scenery is nothing short of gorgeous, and the sort of clever animated effects that Pixar has become known for are present at every twist and turn. Specifically, the will-o-the-wisps (mystical fire spirits) are incredible and vivid and my only complaint would be that I could not physically feel the heat coming off of those burning balls of ectoplasm. Pixar’s attention to minor detail is also spot on as always, and as a suggestion for viewers, I would recommend that you find time to watch Brave at some point (after you’ve seen it the first time) and only pay attention to the movement of Merida’s hair. Each follicle of her wild, orange mop seems to have a life of its own. The curls split naturally in every which direction and their bounciness as she runs and rides her horse is almost as exciting as the entirety of the final action sequence.

That said, I would give Brave a score of eight out of ten. What it lacks in some originality is more than made up for by the other joys that this film can provide for all age groups. I would highly recommend seeing it.

 

Final score: 8/10

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