Movie review: "Brave"

When I first saw the posterboard for Pixar’s 13th feature, adorned by a young woman with fiery red hair against a green-gray woodland backdrop with round eyes watchful for oncoming danger, wielding a bow and arrow and standing under the embroidered stone block letters that read “BRAVE,” I was intrigued. Any new Pixar film is a cause for anticipation, especially the first non-franchise entry since 2009’s much renowned Up. But what got my attention was the promise of an adventure story focusing on a female lead, and the hope that it wouldn’t, as these stories tend to do, dissolve into a romance. Think of it: even Mulan, the first Disney heroine to actually save the day, still needed a man at the end to fulfill her journey. I wondered what Pixar, producers of some of the best-told stories in modern cinema, could do with such a premise.
When I saw the trailer for Brave, which revealed its plot, my hopes sank just a little. Not because I necessarily felt this movie would fall back to that tradition, but because the premise was a little too familiar. We have the headstrong Princess Merida (voiced by the always excellent Kelly Macdonald,) who takes more after her stout-hearted warrior father than the prim and proper queen. Merida, much to her hotheaded chagrin, is made to be wed to a prince of another clan in order to unite the nation. To do this, her mother tries to squeeze Merida into the princess mold. Seeing the trailer, I was already thinking of Mulan.
Seeing the movie itself, I was treated to the usual high quality of Pixar animation. The medieval Scotland setting offered a lushly-detailed and brightly-colored landscape for the characters to play on, and Merida’s head of unruly ginger curls was particularly impressive. After the setup, Merida offers to hold an archery contest for her hand. She then proceeds to best all of her suitors spectacularly to claim herself as an independent woman.
After running through some well-worn archetypes (the hyper-masculine and dumb herd of men, the silly-spooky old crone and so-forth), we arrive at the central plot point, which took me quite by surprise, as nothing in the trailer alluded to it. It’s probably okay to go into detail, but I’ll just be safe and say it makes a shift from Mulan to something more akin to Brother Bear (remember that one?)
What ensues is a hearty story of the new and the traditional reconciling with one another, rife with symbols, hitting the right emotional marks and delivering a thrilling (though brief and, maybe a little obligatory) climax.  Directed by Mark Andrews, Steve Purcell and Brenda Chapman, it has the brisk pace of an action film and makes use of the 3D technology by having us slide around and run between characters and sets, giving us the sense of being plopped in the middle of a threatening forest, a Stonehenge-like monument or a dining-hall brawl. Humor is tossed in to lighten the tone and appease the kids: it’s childish and cheeky, though never particularly clever.
The story by Chapman offers the fairytale kind of quality intermixed with high adventure, but, like a great deal of today’s animated features, it treads on some very worn ground and doesn’t quite bring enough new qualities to make it as exciting a work is it should be.
Merida didn’t disappoint as a strong lead, but while the movie avoids centering on a woman’s dependence on men, her arc was still defined by a relationship. That it was with her mother, tough, did add a more poignant dimension than a conventional love story could. It’s a refreshing thing that this remains a woman’s movie, without resorting to sloppy and obligatory romance. (Incidentally, I noticed that there are no Brave action figures on the shelves, only plush toys and dress-up dolls. Discuss.)
Let’s face it: there’s no such thing (so far) as a bad Pixar movie. Even the oft-maligned Cars 2 is serviceable entertainment (okay, pun intended.) Brave plays like a better-than-good Disney animated feature, but that doesn’t say much of a film from Pixar, which raised the bar so high with the Toy Story movies, The Incredibles, Wall-E and Up. There’s a certain magic in those films that’s lacking here. Its warm heart and stunning visuals warrant a recommendation, but when held up to its pedigree, Brave doesn’t quite hit the mark.