2 ½ stars (out of four)
The princess is Merida (voiced by Kelly Macdonald), a spunky
tomboy who has inherited a love of archery from her father, a medieval Scottish
king. She bounds about the woods on horseback shooting practice targets and
boasting an impressive marksmanship, her red curls bouncing and billowing
behind her. Her mother (Emma Thompson), however, has no patience for such
unladylike shenanigans. As a future queen, Merida should be preparing for
marriage not prancing around, pretending to be a warrior.
The King (Billy Connolly) encourages his daughter. He is a
towering, barrel-chested brute of a man with one wooden leg in place of the one
he lost in battle with a great bear. He is known in his kingdom as the Bear
King, having a special knack for slaying the beasts (except, of course, the one
that got away with his leg). Perhaps he sees something of himself in Merida –
his only other children are his three sons, an impish trio of toddlers still
too young for warfare – and he hesitates before inviting the Three Clans to the
castle so that his daughter may select a husband from the first-born sons of
the Clans’ leaders, as is tradition.
The Clans are a motley bunch and their sons aren’t much to
choose from. At any rate, Merida rejects the idea of a forced marriage and sets
out to change her fate. Enter the witch and the spell, the latter of which
Merida hopes will change her mother’s adamant stance on marriage. What follows
are some unfortunate misunderstandings and a few human-to-bear transformations,
a plot development that should be whimsical and enchanting but is mostly silly
more than anything else. The movie plays this magical turn for laughs; the big
reveal occurs in a slapstick sequence that goes on far too long.
Around this point, you can feel the movie grasping for
ideas. There is potential here for a grand tale, one that carries some real
emotional heft, and to see the movie opt for an easier route is a bit
disappointing. The development of the mother-daughter conflict (and their
subsequent bonding and reconciliation) follows obvious and familiar paths; more
than one scene seems primed for Brave-themed
Mother’s Day cards.
The characters also have a tendency to over-explain themes
and plot points. Pixar films are usually more trusting of their audience; the
best of them expect us to get what’s going on without announcing (and
repeating) it.
This is still a Pixar film though and the earmarks of their
high standards for animation are all here. The landscapes are vividly depicted
in sweeping wide shots and the characters’ faces are subtle and expressive in
ways few animated films achieve.
But the arc of the story never matches the ambition of the
visuals or the grace with which Pixar’s animators render them. Brave rests comfortably in that lower tier of Pixar films
alongside the Cars movies and the
latter portions of Up (the
opening sequence of that film remains something of a self-contained
masterpiece), which is to say that it is solid family entertainment on par with
or exceeding the output of other animation studios. It is bright and cheerful
and full of clever moments in spite of the loudly grinding gears of its
predictable plot. That the film might have been better makes its modest success
more than a little underwhelming.
- Steve Avigliano, 6/22/12
