Pixar’s first leading female protagonist and their first princess film. ‘Brave’ was breaking Pixar’s traditional mold and the result is a solid effort from the studio that brought us memorable films such as ‘Toy Story’ and ‘Up’.

 

‘Brave’ tells the story of a princess named Merida who doesn’t want to be a princess (Jasmine – you have competition), sick of her mother telling her that she can’t do this because it’s not princess-like, an example being Archery. But, when her mother who wants to keep the traditional games to compete for her daughter’s hand in marriage, Merida takes anger over her mother as she doesn’t want to be married. Instead, she seeks out to a Witch to change her mother, which will change her fate.

 

After seeing the teaser trailer before Pixar’s previous film ‘Cars 2’, the teaser trailer had me excited as it looked like a fantasy action film, which isn’t the film’s main focus, but only a small part of the film’s larger focused story about the relationship between the mother and daughter, which may have made people a bit disappointed when the film is completely different from its intriguing teaser trailer, which is my favourite among Pixar’s teasers. I still think the film might have been better if the film captured the teaser trailer’s epicness, but what we have is still very good.

 

‘Brave’ offers one of Pixar’s most interesting characters, Merida, and offers a very good story of the relationship between mother and daughter, which is different from previous animated films that I can think of. ‘Lilo & Stitch’ is the one I can think of the most as to being similar to ‘Brave’s theme, as Nani becomes a mother figure to Lilo, but that film is about the relationship between the two sisters.

 

Back to ‘Brave’, the side characters are a bit goofy, even for Pixar standards, and Pixar’s most slapstick film, but while there are some misses among the jokes department, the most jokes go to Merida’s three little brothers who stole the show in terms of humour.

 

Concluding, ‘Brave’ is a solid family film with a good story, some memorable characters and beautiful animation. ‘Brave’ isn’t with Pixar’s greats like ‘Toy Story’ or ‘The Incredibles’ as it does become a bit too goofy at times, but it is a solid animated flick that is filled with some great moments, an example being Merida competing in the Highland Games.

 

‘Brave’ may not have hit the bullseye on the target, but it gets points for being close.

 

Score: 7.7/10

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