"Brave"

I just got done reviewing a couple of horror movies, so now lets do a nice family film.

“Brave” is one of those movies that I got done watching and thought, “Hrm, is that all there is?” (I had the same experience with “Primer” recently).

Until now, I have unabashedly loved every movie that Pixar has made since Toy Story in ‘95, for a multitude of reasons.  For fifteen years, Pixar raised the bar in filmmaking (not just animation).  With each new film, they have set a new standard for storytelling in film, whether redefining film classics like “The Magnificent Seven” (with “A Bug’s Life”) or “Chinatown” (with “Monsters Inc”), or reinventing the superhero or spy mythos (“The Incredibles”, “Cars 2”), or creating out-rightly original stories (“Up”, “Wall-E”).  

But what Pixar has done best is create stories of unprecedented creativity with serious stakes and honest heart, particularly with a degree of emotion and complexity of character normally only seen in serious dramas, and rarely seen in a “family” films.
In “Finding Nemo”, Dory’s monologue takes the audience by surprise, as does the opening where Marlin has to face the loss of his wife and all but one of his unborn children.  In “Toy Story 3”, the characters are forced to face not only the loss of their closest friend, but, in an unexpectedly dark turn, their own mortality.  The opening scenes of “Up” tell a wonderful and heartfelt love story in five minutes without a word spoken, and that’s just the opening of the story.

However, “Brave”, while showing it’s own degree of imagination and heart, lacks the degree to which Pixar has produced consistently for a decade and a half. On the other hand, (and this is where my frustration comes in) what “Brave” does best, better than any movie before it, is reinvent the idea of the “Disney Princess” movie. The idea of the “Disney Princess” has been a staple of Disney marketing for over a decade, all based on a number of films which Disney has made since Walt’s first feature film, “Snow White”, which are all based on fairy tales, and which all involve a prince and princess falling in love and ending up together at the end. The marketing side seems to be the natural (used loosely) outgrowing from the Alan Menken Disney musicals of the early 90’s (“The Little Mermaid”, “Beauty and the Beast”, “Aladdin”), which, in a matter of four years carried the number of “Disney Princesses” from three (the other two being “Cinderella” and “Sleeping Beauty” to six.

While none of these movies seems to have been made explicitly with the “Disney Princess” marketing in mind, once the marketing ploy began, it has glommed on to every film of this paradigm that Disney has produced.  However, from the late 90’s to the mid 2000’s, quality in Disney animation production (with the few exceptions of “Treasure Planet”, “Lilo and Stitch”, and “Atlantis”) dropped as remarkably and quickly as Pixar’s reputation grew.  So, in 2006, Disney made John Lasseter, who was then the head of Pixar, the chief creative officer at Disney.  Lasseter, who had been directly responsible for numerous projects at Pixar, including “Toy Story” and “Cars”, has, in that time, worked to influence change in Disney animation productions more in line with Pixar.

Since that time, Disney has produced two more of the “Disney Princess” films: “The Princess and The Frog”, and “Tangled”, the latter of which being Disney’s version of the story of Rapunzel.  These films have both strongly reflected Lasseter’s influence, reinventing numerous defining characteristics of the “Disney Princess” paradigm, making for stronger characters and more complex stories.  However, none of these films has yet challenged the one staple of the “Disney Princess” stories, namely, the need for a prince.

This is where “Brave” succeeds.  Far from following the standard paradigm, “Brave” doesn’t have a prince.  Actually, it has three, and, far from being handsome or charming, they’re all goofy and awkward.  In the story, Merida, who is required by tradition (and her mother) to choose one of these ridiculous suitors to be wed, decides, instead, to break and challenge tradition, and refuse.  From this, the conflict between Merida and her mother divides them and leads to Merida inquiring after a witch she meets accidentally for a potion to ‘change’ her mother.  Her mother is changed . . . into a large black bear.  Now, Merida must learn to change her mother back before her mother is found, mistaken for the killer black bear Mor’du and killed.

The course of this story is, for a “Disney Princess” movie, unlike any other before it.  Merida’s mother isn’t evil, far from it; she just wants what she believes is best for her daughter.  The witch Merida finds isn’t evil, either. She’s not very good . . . that is to say, she’s rather mischievous, but she’s not pushing for some great evil scheme, dark purpose, or all consuming want, she’s just trying to make a living.  Merida herself is shown to be her father’s daughter, brash, loud, daring, tough, and a little foolish.  Overall, where numerous previous films have broken with convention here and there, but “Brave” breaks all conventions for a “Disney Princess” movie, which is, in turn, one of the themes of “Brave”: break convention, break tradition; a powerful lesson for anyone, especially Disney animation.  Also a powerful lesson for Disney marketing.

In all, even after writing this review, I’m still conflicted over my feelings about “Brave”.  It’s a good movie: heartfelt, imaginative, and fun.  I’m just not sure that it is up to Pixar’s usual standards.  For Disney Animation, it’s a victory.  For a Pixar movie, its mediocre.  For a “Disney Princess” movie, it’s a revelation.