![]() There'll be fire and sword if it's not set right. You embarrassed them! You embarrassed me! Michty me! I've just about had enough of you, lass! I swear, Angus, this isn't going to happen. I think I could make you understand if you would just. If you could just try to see what I do, I do out of love.īut it's my life, it's. I want my freedom!īut are you willing to pay the price your freedom will cost? But we can't just run away from who we are. Even I had reservations when I faced betrothal. We'll expect your declarations of war in the morning." In fact, she might not ever be ready for this, so that's that. You can just tell the lords, "The princess is not ready for this. Call off the gathering! Would that kill them? You're the queen. ![]() Merida, all this work, all the time spent preparing you, schooling you, giving you everything we never had. "I don't want to get married! I want to stay single and let my hair flow in the wind as I ride through the glen, firing arrows into the sunset!" Sure you can! There, there! That's my queen! All right, here we go. His movie blog is Email beifuss(at).įind more Disney news on the OC Disney page.Pretend I'm Merida, speak to me. John Beifuss writes for The Commercial Appeal in Memphis. Rated PG for scary action and rude humor. The directors even embrace some of the more tiresome tropes of live-action cinema, as when folk-pop music is used to score Merida’s action montages. It could be an episode of a fantasy TV series about a Scottish royal family: “This week, Merida must work fast to reverse a spell when Queen Elinor is turned into a bear.” The animation is beautiful, of course, but this may be the first Pixar film that doesn’t convince us the story couldn’t be told just as well with live action. It’s likely that most of the kids in the audience never before had considered the idea of their parents failing to recognize them and genuinely trying to hurt them.ĭespite the intensity of the premise, “Brave” feels somewhat constricted. These scenes seemed to scare young viewers at the preview screening I attended. Brief scenes in which this Mama Bear seems ready to maim and even kill her daughter tap the same primal taboo that causes us to recoil when we read about real-life mothers who murder their children. Thus, Elinor’s fuzzy new identity places her in grave danger from her own spouse even as it provides a context for Baloo-like slapstick and sight gags.Īs Elinor becomes more bearish, she becomes dangerous and forgetful of her human identity. This time, it’s Elinor who - in response to one of pouting Merida’s selfish wishes - is magically transformed into a large bruin of the type that chomped off the leg of her husband, the warrior-king Fergus (Billy Connolly), a dedicated bear-hunter. “Brave” is reminiscent of “Brother Bear” (2003), one of Disney’s last “traditional” animated features, in which an Inuit boy is turned into a bear. On a darker note, this young-adult coming-of-age fairy tale is informed by Jungian psychology’s notion of the Electra complex - the rivalry between mother and daughter brought on by adolescence and sexual maturation. The onscreen weeping will find many echoes in the audience, especially among mothers and daughters. “You’ve always been there for me - you’ve never given up on me,” a chastened Merida tells her mother, Queen Elinor (Emma Thompson), in a climactic embrace. Is this distinction a testimony to Chapman’s talent, or an indicator of the lack of women in animation? Chapman’s only previous feature as a director was DreamWorks’ kitschy 1998 Torah-inspired cartoon, “The Prince of Egypt.” (The co-director of “Brave” is veteran animator Mark Andrews.) Merida’s vanguard status is appropriate: The story is by Brenda Chapman, who also co-directs, making her the first woman to helm a Pixar feature. The trailers and posters for “Brave” focus almost exclusively on rebellious Merida (voiced by Kelly Macdonald), a teenage princess in an ancient Scottish kingdom and the first female protagonist to carry a Pixar project. The movie (in unnecessary 3-D, at most locations) is surprisingly mature in theme and at times even somewhat terrifying, but also underwhelming and preachy, if less self-consciously grandiose than most Pixar productions. Instead, “Brave” - true to its title adjective? - is perhaps Pixar’s oddest film, a fable that might as well have been titled “My Mother, the Bear.” ![]() The company’s marketing campaign for the latest computer-animated feature film from the geniuses at Pixar promises an adventure of you-go-girl empowerment intended to update the tradition of the so-called “Disney princess” for the Katniss Everdeen generation. Disney must have been confounded by “Brave.”
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