Movie Review: Disney Pixar’s Brave is beautiful, yet lacking
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Visually beautiful and detailed, magical:
Cardboard charactersBrave is a fun story about family and overcoming personal flaws that keep someone from becoming stronger person. I agree with other reviews that Brave is “visual magic,” because the attention to detail was just stunning. The story itself was all right, and while most of the characters were stereotypical, I still enjoyed watching it—just not as much as I’d hoped.
The Short Version
Brave is a fun story about family and overcoming personal flaws that keep someone from becoming stronger person. I agree with other reviews that Brave is “visual magic,” because the attention to detail was just stunning. The story itself was all right, and while most of the characters were stereotypical, I still enjoyed watching it—just not as much as I’d hoped.
The Details
So I haven’t really done that many movie reviews, for obvious reasons (*cough* this is a book blog *cough*) BUT I saw a few big movies recently and wanted to share.
Today, we’re tackling Brave. Here’s the trailer:
Brave is cute. Is it epic? No, not as much as I’d hoped. It was hyped. Visually, it’s beautiful, but the story is lacking. I won’t give away the plot, since there isn’t much of one, but we follow a Scottish princess who wants to change her fate and not be forced to marry a man she doesn’t know. She dabbles in magic and, lo and behold, there are consequences! Hilarity ensues. Here’s a clip from the movie, since I can’t find the scene with the witch:
Like I said, it’s cute. The movie is pretty funny, but the story itself lacks the substance I’ve come to expect from Pixar after movies like Up. Men were painted as mostly-bumbling idiots with a violent streak, which I think was a ploy to make the women appear more powerful by comparison. I really just think that could have been handled in a less stereotypical way.
The characters themselves, though, weren’t sugarcoated. I loved that. Merida is anything but graceful and constantly stuffs her face or trips on things. She seems as if she’s barely hanging on. Merida’s mother is obviously imperfect but desperately trying to do right by her children, and Merida’s father…well, he’s funny.
There’s some subtle adult humor woven into the narrative, which keeps us children ages 18+ entertained without tainting the precious young ones. You know, because Disney does that.
All in all, it was cute. I enjoyed seeing it in the theatre, where I believe the depth of the visual elements could be truly enjoyed. Is this what I was expecting after gearing myself up for this for months? No. Oh well.
Overall impression
Pretty good. Yeah, go see it—but get a matinee if you can.
The thing about Brave, in my view, is that it’s a story about a daughter and a mother who have problems *and then learn to work them out*. Merida learns the value of everything her mother taught her, AND her mother learns to value Merida’s opinion. How many other movies have a story like that?
How many Disney princesses even HAVE mothers?
Granted. You have a great point. I just think that even with a focus on the mother and daughter, the other characters didn’t have to be dumbed down. While the warring men added some humor, for instance, their characters were flat. Pixar could have kept the bonding story line without making the characters and the plot so predictable.
Don’t get me wrong. I enjoyed it, but it wasn’t as good as I expected. Thus, the disappointment.
I wasn’t a big fan of it either. I was expecting a firey red head to do some cool fighting, save a kingdom, smash a bad guys face in and stuff like that, but instead she had to save her mom from…turning into a bear permanently. What? Did I completely miss this storyline in the movie trailer? Yeah, so I was thrown off. Maybe if I knew what I was getting into.
Great review!
Thanks, Rachel!