Brave Review
Brave, this summer’s entry into Pixar’s pantheon of yearly animated feature films, at times feels like classic Pixar clockwork and at other’s like a new path being discovered for the first time. As much as it owes to the established Pixar (and Disney) storytelling conventions that we’ve grown up knowing, there’s a lot in directors Mark Andrews and Brenda Chapman (and co-director Steve Purcell’s) film that feels just fresh enough (and sometimes strange enough) to warrant the name “Brave”. I could go into detail on where the story waxes when maybe we would expect it to wane but that would be spoiling one of the most interesting and rewarding films that Pixar has ever made.
Really, this is a movie that would be spoiled by knowing what awaits you, and I urge anyone reading this to avoid any and all possible spoilers. And I’ll avoid using any of them in my review here. Disney’s ad campaign has been great in not telling us anything about the actual plot and I would even warn you from the film’s IMDB page if you want to go into the film completely fresh.
So what IS safe to know going in? Well, why not start with what we all already know? Brave is the story of the young Celtic princess Merida (Kelly Macdonald), first born of King Fergus (Billy Connolly) and Queen Elinor (Emma Thompson). Upon coming of age, Merida will be married off to the first born son of one of the three Clan Leaders, Lord Dingwall (Robbie Coltrane), Lord MacGuffin (Kevin McKidd) or Lord Macintosh (Craig Ferguson). And since Merida is a feisty young girl who would rather find her own destiny on the back of her horse with a bow in her hand than have others choose it for her, she sets out to thwart her parents and remain unmarried.
The rest of this movie is on point too.
You got all that? Great… because that’s the first 20 to 30 minutes of the movie. The rest of the running time sees the film go in some really interesting directions as Merida goes off to cut her own path. I wish I could tell you more about the plot, including some of my favorite moments, but I really want you to discover this movie for yourselves and the campaigns for the film have done such a great job in keeping things secret. My job is in reviewing the film, not ruining it. Just know that once Merida sets this snowball rolling, it begins to grow beyond her control, knocking down everything in its path and awakening both past secrets and inner truths. As soon as the “plot” started kicking in and going into some strange places, I turned to my friend Brian Walton and whispered “did you know what this movie was about?” He shook his head no. “It’s fantastic.”
And it is… for many reasons. Probably the strongest and most obvious reason is that Brave has the strongest female characters of any of the Pixar movies. And I don’t just mean Merida, although she’s pretty strong and fantastic to watch as she grows through the trials and lessons of the film. But Merida’s mother, Queen Elinor, works as a wise and patient counterweight to Merida’s youthful impatience. The movie is very much about this central relationship and how both characters grow from one another. It’s also how they work to define not only their own lives, but their family and the legacy of their kingdom. I don’t recall Disney or Pixar telling a story that had this strong of a female message or protagonist without the counterweight of a Prince or a male hero. In fact, the males in the film are all entirely used as comedic relief or as cautionary tales. Knowing that little boys make up so much of the toy buying market that drives these summer films (last summer’s “Cars 2” seemed to be completely dictated by it), it was a brave decision (there’s that word again) to make a children’s summer tentpole movie that relies entirely on a female driven story.
And it works. Not only were there no little boys complaining of boredom when the lights came up, there didn’t seem to be a whole lot of dry eyes as well. “Brave” gets very emotionally intense, especially at the end. I was asked by a friend if he could take his 4 year old daughter to see the film and I had to pause and think on it. There are some really scary sequences in the film, and again that ending did a number on everyone. I know that “Toy Story 3” has that scene in the end that everyone quotes as being the scariest, most intense moment in a Disney movie, and it maybe still is, but these two sequences are emotionally intense in two different ways. In the way that Toy Story 3’s end scene found the collective heroes resigned to a horrific fate, but at least there was no question that they were “together in the end”, the emotional ending of “Brave” has everything relying on the shoulders of one female hero and whether or not she did the right thing… and was it enough in the end? It’s just as heartbreaking as the idea that you may not ever see Buzz and Woody again. I could keep arguing on the permanent ramifications and differences of each ending but I’m coming very close to telling too much and that’s something I swore not to do. Just come prepared with some tissues.
The Comedy Rule of 3s applies here… the funniest characters in the movie.
In the end, is “Brave” the best of the Pixar films? I don’t think there’s ever going to be a definite answer for that but it’s definitely one of the best and one of the most interesting. And it’s great to see Monkey Island alum and Sam and Max creator Steve Purcell involved in such a huge film. There is a sequence in the movie in which I thought “wow… that like something they would have put in a Lucasarts adventure game”! And sure enough, Steve’s name was right there in the titles. Tonally, the movie plays light and dark better than most of the Pixar films, and swings between the two probably the widest and the most frequently while hanging the audience out to dry for the longest stretches of time in the most uncomfortable middle, where you really don’t know where this movie is headed. While some detractors have named this as a reason to not enjoy the film, I argue that it’s what makes it one of the most interesting and I can’t wait to see it again because there seemed to be plenty still left unexplored. Technologically and visually, Pixar is still the company to beat. Even though the film has a bit in common with the similar setting of “How to Train Your Dragon”, it’s apparent in “Brave” that they are still the masters of the CGI animated film, both on the screen and on the page. I can’t recommend it to you enough and will be venturing back into the wilds of the megaplexes to see it again when it’s released this weekend.