BRAVE: a Pixar Disappointment
SPOILER ALERT: The following post contains spoilers.
When I saw the trailers for Brave, I was very excited about the movie. Pixar rarely lets me down (although it has been known to happen, see: Wall-E), and it was about time they started to challenge the Disney Princess franchise.
For those of you who have not seen the movie, I’ll give a synopsis:
Merida is a Scottish princess who wants to run wild and free. Her mother has very different ideas about how a lady should act. When the clan chiefs arrive with their sons to compete for Merida’s hand in marriage, Merida throws a temper tantrum and runs away. She meets a witch who makes her a cake that will “change” her mother.
Spoiler: Instead of changing the mother’s mind, however, it changes her into a bear. In order to protect her mother from being killed by the clan chiefs, Merida has to figure out how to break the spell. During the course of this, Merida and her mother each gain a new appreciation for each other’s strengths and the way the other sees the world.
I heard some unfavorable reviews when it was in theaters, and never did manage to get out to see it, but when it came to DVD we rented and watched it, thinking Leiana would really enjoy it. Which she did, however, I’m sorry to have to say it, but Brave was a second Pixar disappointment for me.
But we’ll start with the pros:
There were many little things about this movie that I actually enjoyed.
- The animation/artistry. The movie was gorgeous. Absolute eye-candy. The detail was incredible. The representation of the Scottish landscape was stunning.
- The representation of a family with mom, dad, and kids all still alive. I’m a sucker for stories about families, so score a big one for Pixar over most Disney films.
- Merida’s parents truly love each other - you see this illustrated often throughout the movie, and I was genuinely impressed with the portrayal of their marriage. They truly love and respect each other and that is shown quite beautifully and tastefully.
- I loved the scene with the parents where they’re trying to figure out what to do with Merida and the father tells the mother that they should “role-play” so that she can sort of figure out what she wants to say to Merida before she actually talks to her. They were open and honest with each other, neither one of them blamed the other for the way Merida was acting. It was a beautiful, humorous, and touching scene... I wish more of the movie had stuck with that feel.
- The moral of the story. Both Merida and her mother end up having to compromise, and they end up with a much stronger relationship as a result. The daughter learns that she has to grow up, but is allowed to remain free. The mom learns to “let her hair down” a bit and be free, but still manages to be elegant and beautiful.
Side-Note:I wasn’t sure where to put this. It wasn’t a major con, but it definitely wasn’t a pro. It wasn’t a make-it-or-break-it point for me, but can I just go on a tangent and mention that this movie contains the absolute lamest archery contest in the history of archery-contest-scenes? Possibly this is because the entire contest was covered in the trailers (movie trailers these days are a whole ‘nother post I’ll have to do some other time). I guess I just figured that there’d be more to it than was shown in the preview... nope. It’s not like excellent archery contests haven’t been done before (see: Disney’s Robin Hood). But, no, they got so caught up in the technical achievement of the arrow-splitting scene, that they forgot to write an interesting scene around it (or, again, they gave too much away in the trailer...) either way, it could have been improved. With the trailers revolving so completely around the archery contest, one of the reasons I was so looking forward to this movie was because I thought that would be a central plot point... I was supremely disappointed.
Cons:
I only had two issues with this movie, but they’re enormous.
- The unfair portrayal of men as incompetent idiots. I cannot abide the mistreatment of men in our current culture. Every male character in the movie is portrayed as a buffoon. They seemed only to be included for the purposes of comic relief; they were the butt of every joke. Every male character was little more than an unflattering caricature. They were portrayed in action as brawling idiots who didn’t possess a serious thought in their heads. The way the men were presented in this movie seemed to say that everything a man does is the wrong way to solve a problem. This inequality was even depicted in the artistry of the movie: not a single male character was drawn to look remotely pleasant or attractive... while Merida and her mother were absolutely stunning. Another side-effect of this major flaw was the resulting quantity of crude/crass humor, which I didn’t appreciate. Okay, I could go on about this all day, but I’d just end up getting angry and you’d be bored. Let’s move on to the second major flaw with this movie.
- The lack of plot. I don’t even know where to begin looking for the plot... because this script had about enough story for a 20-minute film. For the life of me I cannot figure out how they stretched it out to an hour and a half. Before watching the movie I read the children’s book version to my daughter. The book was short and fairly uninteresting. I was assuming that the story had been truncated to fit into a few brief pages. I was highly disappointed to find out that this was not so.
Overall, this just goes to prove once again my point on movies: pretty animation or lots of special effects a great movie does not make. This isn’t one I ever have to see again, and I won’t be owning it. The things I appreciated about it simply don’t outweigh the negatives for me.