Technical: 4
Moral: 3.5
CINEMA rating: PG 13
Brave is an animated adventure about a
feisty, red-haired Scotland princess, Merida (voiced by Kelly Macdonald), who
wants most of all to be free. Free, that
is, from tradition personified by mother Queen Elinor (Emma Thompson) who is
trying her queenly motherly best to make a demure future queen of her tomboyish
teenage daughter. Merida does not give a
hoot how princesses are supposed to act, behave, or be, and over needlepoint
and courtly manners the little redhead actually prefers to pack her bow and
arrows to gallop into the forest with her favorite horse Angus. Merida’s rather un-kingly father King Fergus
(Billy Connolly), a hunk of a bear hunter, lets her get away with her
brattiness, but Queen Elinor doggedly trains the girl the way she was trained
in her youth.
When
suitors from neighboring kingdoms arrive to vie for the hand of the reluctant
princess, she escapes to the forest and there encounters will-o’-the’wisps,
tongues of blue flame traditionally believed to be spirits that lead people to
their fate. They take Merida and Angus
down the path to a cabin where lives a gnarled old witch (Julie Walters) disguised as a woodcarver. Distraught, Merida asks the witch for a spell
that could change her mother’s mind about smothering rules, especially her
insistence on marrying her off. Her
mother does change, but not in the way Merida has expected, and in order to
reverse the spell, Merida must act fast.
With the help of her much younger brothers—triplets and redheads,
too—they race to catch the second sunrise to save their mother.
Pixar
is a reliable name when it comes to big, bold, beautiful, and meticulously
rendered animations. If anything is apparent in the movie’s
details and astonishing settings—the lush landscapes, the foliage, the
castles—it is the intensive research the makers must have done to perfect this
piece. Even the hair styles of Merida
and Queen Elinor have been thoughtfully designed to speak for the character of
either person: the heavy, long and neatly braided style of the brunette queen
evokes courtliness and propriety, while the unruly, free-flying red curls of
the princess incarnate her impetuousness. Critics tend to compare Pixar
offerings without giving each a chance to be just itself. Thus they feel Brave is not as compelling as Wall-E,
Up or Toy Story but is definitely better than Cars 2—that stuff. But each
Pixar number has a charm all its own, and in Brave it is in the emotional depth conveyed through the development
of Merida’s character, from the rebellious enabler of her mischievous
brother-triplets to a… well, you’ll see for yourself.
This
first princess movie from Pixar is as formulaic as any Disney princess movie,
containing the usual elements (the hero in crisis, the animal friend,
superhuman intervention, etc.) except that Brave
has no romantic interest to speak of—no frog turning into a prince by a kiss,
no prince for the princess to ride off to the sunset with. At first glance Brave seems to be simply about mommy issues, but a deeper look reveals
a more serious message being delivered: that the “happily ever after” is the
fruit of one’s courageous attempt to find one’s destiny against all odds. “You cannot run away from who you are, (a
princess)” Queen Elinor tells Merida. As
the story unfolds, the statement rings true but for the viewer comes to mean that
Merida cannot run away from being Merida in order to become a princess—she has
to be who she is.
CINEMA
cautions parents that Brave has
certain scenes which may scare very young children (below 7-years-old). With proper guidance especially on the issue
of obedience to parents and rebelliousness, older ones and pre-teens may
benefit from its message.
