Review: Brave

I took my girls to see Brave today.  I’ll give you their reactions before I go into my own.  Josie, my seven-year-old, cried at the end.  Actual tears.  I had to console her during the closing credits.  In fairness, she’s a sensitive child.  Kara, my three-year-old, fell asleep.  In fairness, she was really tired.  She fell asleep on the way to the theater and managed to stay awake through most of the movie.  She had to sit on my lap, but that was mostly because she was too little to hold the seat down on her own.

I hold Pixar to a pretty high standard.  I’m getting that out of the way because I am going to focus a lot of my attention on the movie’s faults.  If this had been a Dreamworks movie, I’d probably be praising it for the luscious details and the complex story.  Brave is a good movie.  But it is one of the lesser entries in the Pixar catalogue.
The marketing for Brave is intentionally misleading.  It focuses on Princess Merida, a fiery red-head who enters an archery contest to compete for the right not to get married.  The commercials sell the idea of Merida having a fantastic adventure in a magical bear-infested forest.  Those elements are part of Brave, but they are not the movie’s focus.
The first hour of Brave is spent of exposition.  We meet Merida’s family.  We get to know all of the clans that have come to her father’s castle to compete for her hand in marriage.  We learn a complex backstory about the king’s history with a “demon bear” and the legendary story of how that bear came to be.  In the end, all of these things will tie together.  But getting to that point is a bit of a slog. 
The center of Brave is Merida’s complex relationship with her mother, the queen.  The queen spends every moment of most every day training Merida to be a proper princess.  But all Merida wants to do is ride horses and shoot arrows.  Like a lot of mothers and daughters, their relationship has come to be defined by conflict.  This leads Merida to take a drastic action which is not in any way suggested by the movie’s marketing materials.
I won’t spoil this plot twist.  But I don’t think it was intended to be some kind of Six Sense secret.  It is foreshadowed pretty heavily from the movie’s opening scenes.  I think the marketing department is hiding what happens in Brave because they don’t think it will sell movie tickets.  And they are probably right.  Disney did something similar several years ago and it was not a box office hit.
The problem with Brave isn’t the twist.  It’s the pacing.  Once the movie finally finds its footing, it’s a pretty engaging yarn.  But by that point, the movie is more than half over. 
Which isn’t to say that the first half of the movie is bad.  It isn’t.  There are some very funny moments in the first half.  The visuals are eye-popping as always.  It’s a good movie by any standard.  But it’s not great.  And that makes it a lesser Pixar release.  Also, families with small children should be warned.  This isn’t half as family-friendly as it is being sold to be. 
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daffystardust
Editor
11 years ago

We’re going to see it tomorrow. I’ll check in and let you know what I think. Your vague hints have me intrigued, though. Most of the more recent ads have left me worried that it’ll be filled with sophmoric, low brow humor.

Paul0709
Paul0709
11 years ago

I agree there’s a lot of back story to get out of the way, but I feel it was done in a fairly entertaining manner. However, as my 13-year-old daughter said after seeing it with us last night, “it was nothing noteworthy.” The best stories have great villains, but this tale had the heroine battling her mother who was hardly evil — she is closer to a typical living mom. So it became “spoiled princess rebels against parental expectations.” Not a story for the ages.

daffystardust
Editor
11 years ago
Reply to  Paul0709

I’m going to take issue with the “spoiled teenager v typical mom” angle, because it wasn’t just Merida who needed a reality check. Her Mother had to go through what she went through because of her own stubborness and unrealistic expectations. You shouldn’t try to fit a square peg into a round hole, and that’s what she was trying to do. Merida’s mom needed to spend some time in her daughter’s wheelhouse to appreciate her for the unique individual she was. Honestly, I don’t know how she was supposed to learn what she did about her daughter if Merida didn’t… Read more »

Paul0709
Paul0709
11 years ago

I should have added that my “typical loving mom” comment was a culture-specific reference given that shed was acting within her cultural frame of reference. I too would not want our teenage daughter raised with the same expectations. However, I still go back to the lack of a villain with any real interesting qualities other than being a scary bear that we rarely saw. The witch was actually a much more interesting character than the bad bear — and she was just a plot device used to transform the mom. I sense that at some point the writers were told… Read more »

Paul0709
Paul0709
11 years ago

Some interesting recorded I just found.
http://spinningplatters.com/2012/06/22/film-revi bew-brave/
and
http://www.centerforinquiry.net/blogs/entry/film_review_pixars_brave_aims_high_but_falls_short/
Apparently the original director also had problems with script, because she was replaced half way thru the production–an almost unheard of change for an animated project that takes 3-6 years to complete.

daffystardust
Editor
11 years ago

I do not mean to give Merida a pass on her irresponsible and tragically careless approach to the ‘spell’ (which she clearly never thought of as poison). What I do mean to suggest is that the mother I saw in the first half of the movie was not extraordinarily reasonable and loving in the way she interacted with her teenage daughter. She was a martinet who willfully ignored any disagreement. I found it almost comical that she was surprised by Merida’s reaction to the marriage situation. It was as if she hadn’t been paying attention to who her daughter had… Read more »

daffystardust
Editor
11 years ago
Reply to  daffystardust

The pace was maybe slightly off to me in that the easy pastoral first half gave way to a scarier and more breakneck last half hour or so. I’m guessing that some of the inconsistency which could be pointed to is the result of the change in directors midstream. I was never twiddling my thumbs or wishing they would get on with it, but of course I was watching with three other adults and not with kids. Not sure I want Pixar animating much of what’s going on in Game of Thrones! It does seem to me that despite all… Read more »

Paul0709
Paul0709
11 years ago

Maybe for your next blog series you could create a top ten and/or bottom ten list of villains in kids movies and how they help make or break the story.

Paul0709
Paul0709
11 years ago
Reply to  lebeau

Just don’t forget Syndrome from the Incredibles!

Paul0709
Paul0709
11 years ago
Reply to  lebeau

As a writer, I prefer to give credit to writer/director Brad Bird! 😉

daffystardust
Editor
11 years ago
Reply to  lebeau

I would’ve loved it if Syndrome actually talked about the same stuff as Banky, and not just with his voice.

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