Brave: ***/*****, or 6/10
It was a
given Pixar's long running winning streak of top movies had to come
to an end sooner or later, and judging from the quality of the latest
addition to the Pixar oeuvre, Brave, that time has now finally
come. After two years of releasing sequels only – one very good
(Toy Story 3 (2010)), the other not so much (Cars 2
(2011)) – and with the studio focusing on similar milking dry of
past glory (for example, next year's Monsters University and
the already announced Toy Story 4 and
even Finding Nemo 2...),
Brave was supposed to have been the last apparent vestige of
Pixar's once supreme creative ingenuity, but unfortunately the final
product feels lacking in almost every respect and thus only endorses
the fact Pixar's days of making original animation of the highest
quality, unsurpassed by its various competitors in the industry (Blue
Sky and Dreamworks Animation its closest rivals, this year entering
the field with Ice Age 4 and Madagascar 3
respectively), are now truly behind them. It was feared this would
happen ever since Disney officially took over the fledgling studio
back in 2006, but several fabulous Pixar projects already in the
making (including Ratatouille (2007) and Wall·E (2008)
held off this imminent quality deterioration for a few years.
Whatever deals Pixar and Disney have officially stated to have made
concerning Pixar's creative control, judging from Brave and
the upcoming slate of sequel abundance, Disney has finally managed to
get Pixar in line with its own creative agenda. Unfortunately, the
audience turns out to be the biggest loser in the process.
Like so
many of Disney's classic (and less classic) animated films, Brave
revolves around a young princess and her struggle to fulfill her
dreams and life ambitions despite the wishes of her parents/guardians
who would instead see her become someone she never wanted to be. The
princess in question is named Merida (voiced by Kelly Macdonald) and
is the eldest child and only daughter of the Scottish monarchs King
Fergus (performed with audible joy by Billy Connolly) and Queen
Elinor (played by Emma Thompson), ruling over several clans in the
ancient Scottish highlands in an unspecified period in history, or
put otherwise, in the typical magic kingdom Disney does best, though
this kind of fantasy setting is new to Pixar. While Elinor is a
genuinely regal lady of royal blood, the boorish loudmouth Fergus
obsessed with bear hunting – especially the huge demon bear Mor'Du
that once took his leg – seems her exact opposite, though the pair
of them is deeply in love regardless: Merida has inherited the best
of both worlds, and has grown into a beautiful and intelligent but
adventurous and overly independent young woman who does not take
kindly to being told what to do and much prefers typical male
occupations like hunting, hiking and horse riding over the feminine
arts like poetry and embroidery her mother would prefer to see her
spend her time with. In fact, the strict and stern Elinor tries hard
to shape her daughter into the perfect princess, at all times
directing her attention to the social graces of the Scottish
nobility, but much to her chagrin (and to Fergus' enjoyment, as well
as our own) Merida's tomboyish nature always wins out. Merida herself
has little qualms over being told what to do by her dominant mother,
until the day she learns the clan leaders are visiting the royal
castle to have their firstborn sons compete for the princess' hand in
marriage.
Unlike
the Disney princesses of old, who usually couldn't wait to marry any
number of interchangeable charming princes, Merida does not take
kindly to be auctioned off and means to take her destiny into her own
hands. One could argue the whole notion of a princess fighting her
imminent wedlock instead of willfully embracing it could be taken as
a narrative role-reversal in an attempt by Pixar to pay homage to
the age-old Disney tradition. However, the solution to Merida's
marital issues ultimately fail to feel like any sort of intertextual
nod: in fact, it feels more like the marriage of the formerly free
spirited Pixar and the proudly traditional Disney has reigned in the
creative temperament of the former to keep it more in line with the
boringly conservative ideological policy of the latter. Whereas
Merida might win the freedom to choose her own partner, Pixar
apparently is only allowed to produce fully Disneyesque movies, at
least for the foreseeable future.
In the
case of Brave, the combination of princess and marriage is
hardly the only element present in the plot to remind us of past
Disney films. The film goes so far as to incorporate a number of
songs, much like the ones that used to dominate the soundtrack of
many a Disney classic (think Pocahontas (1995), Beauty and
the Beast (1991) and The Little Mermaid (1989)), except
you shouldn't expect to see these songs win any Academy Awards
anytime soon, considering their rather poor and forgetful quality
(which fortunately does mean they won't get stuck in your head for
many days to come as they used to do). The lyrics literally enter one
ear only to immediately exit the other, but they go a little like
'I'm a Scottish lass, hair all red – Firing arrows makes
me glad – But now my mom wants me to wed – I
wannae, so now I'm sad – Oooh,
I wish my mom were dead';
the usual Disney stuff really, except far from catchy, all for the
best.
Warning!
Spoilers! Of course, a headstrong teenage girl like Merida
doesn't mean to get suckered into holy matrimony so easily and tries
to get out of it by proving her superiority in archery over her
prospected suitors. Despite her remarkable skills at shooting arrows
this attempt fails because she breaks clan rules by competing in this
wholly male tournament, much to the dismay of the clan leaders. When
she gets into a huge argument with her outraged mother over her
conduct unbecoming a princess of the realm, she simply makes a run
for it and flees into the forest, where she encounters a strange
elderly woman masquerading as a wood carver, but of course an obvious
witch, though not as stereotypically evil or sinister as Disney
witches once tended to be, opting instead for the routine of the
bumbling old lady impaired by memory loss. Merida agrees to buy all
her carvings if the aged sorceress supplies her with a single spell
to change her mother's mind, but like all princesses making deals
with magic hags, she doesn't quite get what she hoped for, as she
sees her mother transformed into a bear. This unfortunate
metamorphosis is made even more unfortunate by reminding us of the
much maligned Disney feature Brother Bear (2003), a movie not
deserving the title of 'Disney Classic' at all, and Brave does
an equally adequate job at making us wish we had forgotten all about
that film by also making the plot of a human transforming into a bear
feel wholesomely underwhelming.
Since
Fergus has little love for bears, especially in his own castle,
Merida must smuggle her now furry mother out to the safety of the
woods in a scene devoid of suspense and filled with silly gags
instead. Afterwards, Merida sets out to reverse the spell with her
mother, a human in the body of a bear, in tow, learning that if she
does not break the curse within two days her mother will become a
real bear permanently. In a few all too brief scenes Elinor
demonstrates a loss of her human faculties in favor of bear
instincts, threatening Merida's plight to save her (and in fact, her
very life), but for most of this mother-daughter bonding experience,
director Mark Andrews opts for levity instead, making the bear feel
less like Merida's queen mum and more like a hairy sidekick the likes
of Chewbacca (except less funny). Most of their time in the forest is
spent showing Merida's ability to survive in the wild as opposed to
her stiff mother's total inexperience with outdoor activities, bear
instincts not withstanding, which leads to various scenes intended as
comedy, but feeling too forced to be truly comically successful. In
the long run, a cure against the bear spell is the objective and when
Merida finds a method she must smuggle her mother back into the
castle, keeping her out of her father's spear, while she herself must
take care not to fall prey to Mor'Du, who also turns out to be
royalty cursed to be a bear for all eternity (seems like it was the
witch's answer to any problem). Eventually she succeeds in the nick
of time and all's well that ends well: Elinor is human again and
Merida is no longer forced to marry, all because of – or in spite
of? – Merida's bravery to rebel against traditions but her
willingness to accept responsibility when things go awry. Plot wise,
it's clear Pixar didn't turn out very brave.
In fact,
Brave is most fun when its characters don't act particularly
brave at all. Merida's rebellious shenanigans in the first half of
the film are far more enjoyable than her tiresome and predictable
efforts to set things right in the second half. King Fergus steals
the show not by being brave (though he's certainly shown to be
capable of heroism when protecting his clan from the terrifying
Mor'Du on several occasions), but by being a somewhat childish ruler
apt at telling compelling tall tales, drinking and fighting his
fellow clan leaders in an overall devil-may-care attitude that makes
it clear where Merida gets it from. Similarly, the rulers of clans
Macintosh (only one of many little Steve Jobs tributes in this film),
MacGuffin (cute Hitchcock reference there) and Dingwall are most
convincing and most appreciable when they're shown engaging in petty
bickering and arguing as they're overly proudly introducing they're
equally not so brave sons to Fergus' court. It's the first half of
the movie, when the various zany Scotsmen and their families are
introduced and compete over Merida's affections, where Brave
witnesses its strongest moments. As soon as the movie enters a
more serious tone, at least as much as it can with a bear acting like
a human being, spectator's interest in the overall plot starts to
wane. Still, there's something to enjoy for everybody in Brave.
However, it's just much less than we're used to from a supposedly
original Pixar product. For adults, especially those that have seen
their fair share of both Disney and Pixar films, it's certainly not
the worn out story. They'll have to make due with several good jokes
in the first 45 minutes, and the excellent visual look throughout
(after all, the technological prowess of computer animation continues
to deliver staggering results, and at least Brave makes ample
uses of these). Such impressive visuals are however hindered by
unnecessary 3-D effects, which add little moments of true depth but
make a rather dark film look even more colourless.
In
conclusion, Brave is the definite proof for the growing
numbers of naysayers who predicted the end of the Age of Pixar at the
hands of insidious Disneyfication from within years ago. There's
simply nothing brave about mindlessly copying Disney's style, which
by itself hasn't yielded a truly good film since the late nineties.
For the moment, with the plethora of sequels in store for us, a
further loss of quality seems inevitable for Pixar. Hopefully they'll
pull yet another miraculous Toy Story 3 out of their hat, but
this seems wishful thinking. In the meantime, until another
non-sequel is produced, Brave will be lamented as Pixar's last
original film, one that simply didn't prove to contain much
originality. In the current Disney/Pixar mindset, Brave 2 seems
a more likely thing to happen...
And
watch the trailer here:
