We saw "Brave" and it was... okay

[drwex]

I've been known to assert that Disney could spoil a wet dream. Aside from the sexism and the other -isms that their movies are rife with, they pillage good stories and run them through a pap mill resulting in saccharine awful crap. Fortunately this seems not to have happened here. Mostly I thought it was an OK movie, but for Pixar it was not particularly stellar.

My biggest problem is that it's too goddamn preachy. The movie isn't simply happy to tell its story. Oh, no. It has to beat you over the head, repeatedly, with its MORAL and IMPORTANT LESSONS. When I find myself - during the climactic emotional scene - staring at the main character's hair and thinking "nice job, animators" rather than paying attention to the actual movie you know it's not good.

First off, I should say that the movie does clear the admittedly low bar that has been set for it. It's a self-rescuing princess, a Disney first, with two likable parents; also, I think, a Disney first though I might be wrong about that. The voicing is good - particularly Emma Thompson as Elinor - and the animators clearly did their homework when they went to Scotland. The long and medium landscape shots are all brilliantly evocative; you feel like you're watching a National Geographic film of the country.

The script itself is not per-se awful and there are one or two real laugh-out-loud moments. Kilts, tower... need I say more? The problem is that it doesn't have a lot of real good moments. The witch was straight out of Central Casting and something of a waste.

The film also seems to have problems figuring out just how realistic vs fantastic it wants to be. Brave has some advanced and realistic animated bits (the landscapes and aforementioned hair, for example) and Merida in general is rendered somewhat realistically. But then you put that on the same screen as obvious cartoon characters with stick legs, caricature-exaggerated faces, and goofy anatomies and I got a real uncanny valley effect.

I'm not sorry I saw it, but I'm unlikely to see it again.

Comments

[selenite.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed the heck out of it. Partly because I was expecting fairy-tale with the attendent moral and lack of plot logic. I got a bunch of laughs. And, well, I've got a daughter who could use some preaching at and I'm happy to outsource some of it.

[mrw42.livejournal.com]

I thought that Merida's hair was over-animated and distracting. Pretty, yes, but it was just too much in some scenes. In general, I thought the animation was a big step back for Pixar and Disney.

The story was okay, I guess -- cute, sometimes funny, fairly enjoyable.

Personally, though, I am almost as tired of the spunky, non-traditional, parent-defying Disney Princesses as I was of the picture-perfect, compliant ones.

[inahandbasket]

I feel similarly.
Someone said that they had a good core script that should have been under an hour long and tried to stretch it to nearly two hours instead; that struck a chord with me.
I definitely enjoyed it and wasn't let down, but I was hoping for more out of it.

The pixar short at the start though? Fan-freakin-tastic. :)

[drwex]

Do you know if there was more than one short? We saw one titled, I think "Moon".

[drwex]

Do you find that preaching at your daughter is effective?

[inahandbasket]

That's the one we saw, don't think there was more than one.
I liked it a lot.

[yesthattom.livejournal.com]

Maybe it was low expectations but I enjoyed it. Maybe I was just so happy to see a self-saving Princess.

Oddly the hair was distracting for me too. I wouldn't have changed it... I think it is a sign that we are getting close to "Looker"-like CGI situations.

[selenite.livejournal.com]

Yes, but I know I'd hit the point of diminishing returns quickly so I keep it to a minimum.

We may be having some rupture over the definition of "preaching." I'm referring to "warning an incipient adolescent of various traps waiting for her as her internal brain (and other chemistry) starts to change." So an extended metaphor about snap decisions with vague goals backfiring badly is good education.

[drwex]

Indeed.

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

re the witch, several reviewers said that the witch and the sprites were out of miyazaki.

[drwex]

Yeah, I can see that. Again, not bad on their own but they didn't mesh stylistically with anything else on the screen.

[celticdragonfly.livejournal.com]

I rather enjoyed that it was a kids' film that actually showed the main character in a web of family relationships. Yay Pixar. Disney generally makes sure all the mothers are already dead - except Mulan, and she didn't get much stage time. Here, relationship with father, with mother, with brothers? Yay.