Tart, smart visual and verbal detail lingers to be admired: the witch’s bad carving, the mesmeric will’o’the wisps and the rough charm of the clans are only a few. On an artistic level, it’s revolutionary. (Their directors would agree.)īut Brave has brilliance. It is fair to say, however, that Brave is a shadow of what it should have been – but then that's applicable to 90 percent of all films ever made.
It is hard to argue that Brave would be a rip-snorting hit if Chapman had remained because it doesn’t take a female director to tell a satisfying female story. Then, for reasons not made public, Chapman was taken off the film and now shares the directing credit with Mark Andrews and Steve Purcell. Chapman originated Brave, basing Merida on her own daughter. After 17 years, Pixar finally hired a female director. By Brave 2, we’d adore her - except there probably won’t be a Brave 2 given its difficult birth. Mostly though, she's skilled, selfish, stupid, sneaky and shouty. Perhaps this is the point: Merida has to go through an awful teenage hateful stage before she becomes a character we care about. Happy Mother's Day: watch a clip from Brave When Merida ruins the tournament and asks a witch to change her fate, it is the Queen we fear for, not mouthy Merida.
Queen Elinor (voiced by Thompson and said to be based on Brave’s original creator and director Brenda Chapman) is the most nuanced and therefore the most engaging character. The story of Brave is not Merida’s liberation from arranged marriage: it is the struggle between a gracious, mature mother and a hellcat of a teenage daughter. An animated teenage Machiavelli who can't use a comb, this revisionist princess’s fate is, like the name of one of the tournament’s clansmen, a Macguffin.
She's a terrific archer and horsewoman, sure, but she’s virtually amoral. Its glorious 3D isn’t there to make things poke out at youĪlthough the giant Asterixy-looking King Fergus ( Connolly) and the terrible trio of princelings provide ample comedy, they can’t detract from Brave’s most glaring problem that Merida is no template for heroines. Brave is beautiful but dull, a story with sound and fury signifying nothing but mother/daughter warfare and the need for haircare products. This is not the stellar product we expect from Pixar with its batting average of 11 classics from 12 attempts.
Who wouldn’t love a feature-length 3D animated film shining with the vocal talents of Kelly Macdonald, Kevin McKidd, Craig Ferguson, Billy Connolly and half-Glaswegian Emma Thompson and five propriety software programmes that promise visuals of unparalleled delight?Ī massive media campaign should have been a warning, however, that Brave would not be carried aloft by word of mouth.