Review - Brave

Grade: B

Before I devote 700 or so words to Brave, allow to me to talk about archery for a spell. 

So far, this year’s cinematic offerings have brought audiences four heroes with archery skills in as many months: Katniss Everdeen, Hawkeye, Snow White’s Prince William, and Brave’s Merida. This fall, the CW will air a new series featuring DC Comics’ Green Arrow, the creatively minimalist Arrow. Apparently, not long after The Hunger Games' Katniss drew her bow on the big screen, interest in archery increased across the country, and now, the sport is on a course to be destination viewing at the Olympics. I have nothing against archery, but I think the current zeitgeist around the art of manual projectile fire is the mostly the fault of one thing: the gun.

Sure, Hollywood always has a propensity to copy its own “creative” efforts and establish trends through dueling enterprises (see: Mirror Mirror and Snow White and the Huntsman), but the popularity of archery among this season’s heroes and heroines speaks to a rejection of the very thing many audiences and filmmakers have become: lazy. It’s easy for a hero to pick up a gun, but to draw a bow and let an arrow fly with great accuracy is a skill, albeit one that’s fairly useless as a pragmatic offensive strategy in age where most combatants would much rather pick up a gun. 

Ironically, that’s exactly what Pixar is doing with it’s latest, Mark Andrews’ Brave. Brave builds so heavily off of the Disney princess formula that, despite the obvious work devoted to developing a strong core built around a somewhat fascinating rumination on the mother-daughter relationship, it is clear that Disney's assimilation of Pixar is complete. Brave is just shy of being the quintessential Disney princess movie. It embodies the goal almost every Disney has been building to since Snow White: the independent princess as the feminist ideal. Brave, ostensibly, is the tale of Merida (Kelly McDonald, delivering a spritely brogue accent), a tomboyish Scottish princess with a skill for archery and absolutely no need for a prince to define her, who desperately wants to choose her fate/destiny/path in life, despite the protestations of her mother, the prim Queen Elinor (Emma Thompson).  

The struggle between Merida and Elinor simmered for years, apparently, and explodes when Merida is forced to marry one of the princes--including a dandy, a doofus, and a dope with a impassable accent--of the neighboring kingdoms. The conflict takes a unforeseen turn when Merida happens upon a witch and wishes to change her mother in a way that will allow her the freedom to do as she pleases. With that wish, the witch casts a spell that eventually turns Elinor into a bear. In the mold of Disney’s Freaky Friday, mother and daughter must work together to break the spell that can probably only be broken through mutual understanding and compassion.

The core of Brave is so solid that it makes the unnecessary complications of the plot seem unnecessary and slight. Brave works only because the characters and themes at its core are crafted with more care than the plot. If this was solely a character piece, not meant to capture the attention of young audiences for 90 minutes, then Brave would have been an unabashed success, but as it is Brave risks, which zags instead of zigging as soon as the witch is introduced, losing its core because it is so bent on jumping through hoops just to up the ante on a simple, powerful conflict. Now, I’m not advocating for indie sensibilities in a Disney tentpole, but a less is more approach would have prevented this movie from putting some of the kids in the screening audience to sleep.

That’s not to say that Brave is not entertaining; in fact, Merida’s brothers--three mischievous scamps always in search of a tasty pastry--her boisterous father, King Fergus (Billy Connolly), the fight-hungry lordss (Robbie Coltrane, Kevin McKidd, and Craig Ferguson), and their goofy sons are consistently chortle-worthy. However, the reason these characters are funny is due to a clear “men are mischievous, violent dopes” vibe that runs throughout. While I am all for presenting the positive female images that are desperately needed in modern fiction, the ascension of these images in Brave comes at the expense of every male character. So, what does that say to the young boys and girls in the audience?

I hate to bemoan Brave because there is obvious care and effort on display here, but there’s a bit of tone deafness and contrivance that wreaks havoc with the human story at the core of this flick; even the cute pre-movie short, La Luna, lacks a bit of spark despite an exceptional effort to be a mildly touching and comical reflection on generational discord. Bringing life to simple human stories is what Pixar does best, but it is something they do well because they devote skill and effort to building simple stories without relying heavily on formula and stereotyping. In the case of Brave, Pixar should have just dropped the gun and stuck with the arrow.

Yin: A contrived plot and feminist perspective that paints men as “dopes” weaken a slightly inspired spin on Freaky Friday with a solid core. Pre-movie short is cute but slight in comparison to previous Pixar shorts.

Yang: The central examination of the mother-daughter relationship is well-done, and the moments of levity provided by those dopey menfolk are fairly amusing. Visuals are as lush and gorgeous, as expected from the good people at Pixar

In-between: More butt shots than I thought would be allowable in a Disney flick. Times have indeed changed.