Monday 28 January 2013

Brave Review

I really don't know what to say for this one.  Pixar has been so good at making movies that entertain both the young and old.  Disney has a fine track record of making movies about people who find their way and discover who they really are.  So Disney/Pixar making a movie about a Scottish tomboy princess who rebels against convention to live her own life should be an absolute slam dunk.  But Brave is far from that.

There was a lot of potential for humour with the bumbling king voiced by Billy Connelly and the triplet younger brothers.  But that was all wasted and sent to the background.  It's understandable because the main story is about the girl's relationship with her mother.  The problem is that, in these animated movies, you need to weave the humour elements in with the overall story and they just don't do that in Brave.  Instead, when they push the story along, the humour is left back at the castle and is only picked up again when it is convenient.  The result is long bits of a rather boring and ridiculous plot of a mother getting turned into a bear for some inexplicable reason.  (You see, there are no bears in Scotland and it's widely accepted that there were none in medieval times either.  So the characters would have no knowledge of such a beast and there would surely be no opportunity to kill one and have it stuffed in the castle.  But how else could the girl teach her mother how to fish and ... oh, forget it.)

The one saving grace of this movie is the animation and art.  The scenery is very well made and is a treat to look at.  But that's really the only decent part of this movie.  Pixar was bound to hit a wall at some point and they did it with Brave.  Don't see it.

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