Brave review | A sassy lass with her own aims

'Brave' review: A sassy lass with her own aims

 

By now, Pixer in a class by itself, must compete with itself, and this isn't a good thing for "Brave," a pleasing enough but unremarkable little story about an unconventional fairy tale princess having mother issues in medieval Scotland.

Technically and visually, "Brave" is up to Pixar's exalted standards. The curly red hair of the heroine is rendered with unusual specificity and naturalness, and the animators convey character through posture and gesture with the insight of the great silent filmmakers. But in terms of story and emotional power, "Brave" comes up short. The miracle that was "WALL-E," "Up" and "Toy Story 3" - with their ability to be simple yet profound, universal in their perception while bypassing audience defenses - is not repeated here.
In the best of fairy tales, there is a subconscious truth. Here there is a sort of subterranean unacknowledged rage. On the surface, we get the story of Merida (the voice of Kelly Macdonald), a princess who is born into a destiny she would prefer to escape. The Queen, her mother (Emma Thompson), tries to raise her to be perfect and proper, but Merida is more like her father the King (Billy Connolly) , a hunter and a jolly slob. The crisis between mother and daughter comes to a head when Merida, in her early teens, is told that she must choose a husband.

Instead of presenting its characters as archetypes of either good or evil, "Brave" offers something different. Merida may have problems with Mom, but the audience sees Mom's point of view as well. Indeed, the movie may tilt the balance too far in Mom's direction, so that the film's ostensible heroine ceases to seem adorably spunky and becomes more like an awful brat. To be sure, this approach makes the mother-daughter interaction more realistic, but it also invites the viewer to see the characters in realistic terms, and to judge their actions accordingly.

Indeed, what are we to make of a movie about a teenage girl who poisons her mother? That's really what we're talking about here: The daughter gives her mother a poisoned cake that turns Mom into a bear. Furthermore, what are the unconscious impulses behind a story about a daughter, having committing this crime against Mom, then turning around and becoming Mom's greatest defender - even to the point of protecting Mom when Dad unknowingly wants to kill her?

Think about that: Daughter drugs Mom. Then Dad, not to mention an entire community, tries to kill Mom. That's pretty twisted, and twisted can be good. Twisted can be really interesting. But in the case of "Brave," it's not, because the movie is structurally locked into promoting a conclusion that the filmmakers don't completely believe, one that might even be at war with their own unconscious impulses: Merida is the heroine. Merida is terrific. Yeah, sure.No, the heroine here is the Queen. She is the least simple of the characters and the one that best exemplifies the film's title. Alas, "Brave," lopsided in its focus and confused in its impulses, won't or can't acknowledge that. It's against fairy tale rules to make the heroine anything other than a teenage girl. And so "Brave" ends up in a half-realized zone - respectable, yet somehow off, even slightly at war with itself.

This doesn't make it a bad movie, and it can still be enjoyed. I loved watching the mother in her bear incarnation, the way in which the animators were able to make us see one character in the form of another. But poor Mom. When the clans come out with their swords and pitchforks and surround her, and she's there growling and with no one to listen to her or care, it's hard not to think, wow. To be the mother of a teenage daughter. It's as bad as this, is it?