Brave: Film Review
June 25th 2012 11:42
Link: www.movietrain.net
Brave is a 200 million dollar animation film about a redhead tomboyish Scottish princess Merida, and is the first ever heroine centric Pixar creation. It is expected to open well and rule the box office charts for a few weeks. The overtly feminist 133-minute film will need a lot of luck to survive in long run.
Merida is the first child of the Scottish king Fergus and queen Elinor and more of a son than a daughter to them. She is a free-spirited girl who, instead of playing with dolls, wanders into deep jungle on her horse practicing archery skills. King Fergus dotes on her, but her mother is worried about the girl's future. She would like her to be a prim and proper princess with grace, well trained in royal etiquette, and fit enough to be a queen. This creates a lot of dissonance in mother-daughter relationship. Things come to the fore when three Lords, Macintosh, Macguffin, and Dingwall, arrive with their first-born male heirs seeking Merida’s hand in betrothal following the custom of the Scottish kingdom. Merida wants her suitors to take part in an archery contest. She knows they will fail. The Junior Dingwall hits the bull’s eye by sheer accident though. Merida does the unthinkable after that to the chagrin of her mother. She declares that she will be contesting for her own hand and hits the bull’s eye thrice. This creates a lot of discomfiture and uproar and the Lords are at loggerheads with king Fergus for being insulted by his impetuous and rebellious daughter. Elinor is very angry with Merida for being the cause of the brewing conflict. Merida runs away into the forest and follows a trail shown by will-o-the-wisps that lead her to an old sorceress who gives her a spell to sort out her problems with her mother.
The spell backfires. It turns Elinor into a bear. This is a terrible development. King Fergus hates bears as he had lost his left leg in a fight with a legendary bear Mor’du. Now, Merida has to get her mother out of the royal castle and find a counter spell to transform her back into her old human form. She manages to get her ‘bear’ mother out with the help of her triplet kid brothers. She looks for the old sorceress who has gone away on a sojourn, leaving a complex cue for the cure. This is the time when Merida and Elinor bond as mother-daughter and develop a better understanding of each other. All ends well but before that Fergus almost kills his own wife. Merida defends her mother and has a sword fight with her thickheaded father who refuses to believe that the bear is his wife. The issue of Merida’s betrothal is also sorted out amicably and it is decided that royal progeny should be free to choose their own life-partners.
You develop a liking for the central character Merida. Her free-spirited attitude makes her very attractive. She is so much like Cher, the famous American singer and actor, with curly flaming red hair on her head. I liked her accented voice too (Kelly Macdonald) that goes so well with her slightly eccentric persona. However, there is very little else in the film to surprise and amaze the audience. Its script borrows heavily from live-action films of the genre including its central premise and the mother-daughter bonding theme that probably is more suited to grown up girls. We have seen and heard it before in countless other films. Its gags and jokes are old hats. The quality of animation is excellent but you are let down by the film’s content. One of the big gags in the film is a sequence when Elinor, in her bear avatar, tries to eat fish with improvised fork and knife made out of twigs, in the middle of the forest. Such gags are too commonplace and dull to work with an animation film audience that is constantly looking for novelty and big surprises. The film is predictable and has none of those grand moments of triumph in films like Madagascar 3 to sweep the audience off its feet.
One has not seen such a blatantly upfront stereotypically feminist animation film before. The male characters in the film come across as dense, and boorish jokers. They are an ugly lot with their out of shape brawny and bizarre physique. In contrast Merida and Elinor are intelligent, and good looking. In fact, there is none who can actually be a good match for Merida in the entire crowd of animated Scottish men. She is a far better archer than them and is also the bravest of the lot as the film’s title suggest, thus leaving menfolk bereft of their last remaining glory. The film’s story is written by Brenda Chapman and probably the heavily pronounced feminist perspective is her unique contribution to the project.
The direction by Mark Andrews, Brenda Chapman, and Steve Purcell is competent but their screenplay is disappointing. Patrick Doyle’s music is good. Let us see how does the film do in India. Who knows, it may do well. Indian audiences have been enthusiastically patronizing ‘heroine-oriented’ films these days.
The film deserves three stars, one for the redhead princess Merida, one for Pixar’s excellent animation work, and one for it being the first ever full-fledged mass-marketed feminist animation film of the world.
Merida is the first child of the Scottish king Fergus and queen Elinor and more of a son than a daughter to them. She is a free-spirited girl who, instead of playing with dolls, wanders into deep jungle on her horse practicing archery skills. King Fergus dotes on her, but her mother is worried about the girl's future. She would like her to be a prim and proper princess with grace, well trained in royal etiquette, and fit enough to be a queen. This creates a lot of dissonance in mother-daughter relationship. Things come to the fore when three Lords, Macintosh, Macguffin, and Dingwall, arrive with their first-born male heirs seeking Merida’s hand in betrothal following the custom of the Scottish kingdom. Merida wants her suitors to take part in an archery contest. She knows they will fail. The Junior Dingwall hits the bull’s eye by sheer accident though. Merida does the unthinkable after that to the chagrin of her mother. She declares that she will be contesting for her own hand and hits the bull’s eye thrice. This creates a lot of discomfiture and uproar and the Lords are at loggerheads with king Fergus for being insulted by his impetuous and rebellious daughter. Elinor is very angry with Merida for being the cause of the brewing conflict. Merida runs away into the forest and follows a trail shown by will-o-the-wisps that lead her to an old sorceress who gives her a spell to sort out her problems with her mother.
You develop a liking for the central character Merida. Her free-spirited attitude makes her very attractive. She is so much like Cher, the famous American singer and actor, with curly flaming red hair on her head. I liked her accented voice too (Kelly Macdonald) that goes so well with her slightly eccentric persona. However, there is very little else in the film to surprise and amaze the audience. Its script borrows heavily from live-action films of the genre including its central premise and the mother-daughter bonding theme that probably is more suited to grown up girls. We have seen and heard it before in countless other films. Its gags and jokes are old hats. The quality of animation is excellent but you are let down by the film’s content. One of the big gags in the film is a sequence when Elinor, in her bear avatar, tries to eat fish with improvised fork and knife made out of twigs, in the middle of the forest. Such gags are too commonplace and dull to work with an animation film audience that is constantly looking for novelty and big surprises. The film is predictable and has none of those grand moments of triumph in films like Madagascar 3 to sweep the audience off its feet.
One has not seen such a blatantly upfront stereotypically feminist animation film before. The male characters in the film come across as dense, and boorish jokers. They are an ugly lot with their out of shape brawny and bizarre physique. In contrast Merida and Elinor are intelligent, and good looking. In fact, there is none who can actually be a good match for Merida in the entire crowd of animated Scottish men. She is a far better archer than them and is also the bravest of the lot as the film’s title suggest, thus leaving menfolk bereft of their last remaining glory. The film’s story is written by Brenda Chapman and probably the heavily pronounced feminist perspective is her unique contribution to the project.
The direction by Mark Andrews, Brenda Chapman, and Steve Purcell is competent but their screenplay is disappointing. Patrick Doyle’s music is good. Let us see how does the film do in India. Who knows, it may do well. Indian audiences have been enthusiastically patronizing ‘heroine-oriented’ films these days.
The film deserves three stars, one for the redhead princess Merida, one for Pixar’s excellent animation work, and one for it being the first ever full-fledged mass-marketed feminist animation film of the world.
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