“I love how much my friends know me for my movie thing. It’s rather amusing. Yesterday afternoon, I was chatting with a friend who volunteer that she was gonna see Brave that evening. I told her I’d be seeing it today since me and the BFF had tickets for Mamma Mia. She took it as a sign of the apocalypse that she was seeing a movie before me. That night, the BFFF (count the F’s, different person) texts me his unsolicited one sentance review of Brave “”Not gonna lie, kinda underwhelmed””. Alas, I am inclined to agree.
Pixar has set the bar so unbelievably \m/ high. Toy Story, Cars, The Incredibles, Wall-E, Up, just movie after movie of sheer brilliance. It seems that when you think an idea is too basic or is not gonna work for some reason (ie, really the characters are a bunch of cars? or another Toy story sequel? or an old guy and a flying house?) that you get some awesome surprises. So it stands to reason when you’ve got a concept that you are excited about, bad ass kick butt Scottish princess, that something just doesn’t quite measure up.
There wasn’t really anything wrong with Brave. Well maybe a few nitpicks. They could have done more with the triplets. The story seemed rather contrived (especially by Pixar standards) nad predictable. Merida was little too spot on with her annoying teenage angst. But all in all, still better than a lot of the crap that’s aimed at the wee ones nowadays. But there wasn’t really anything that wowed. The story was pretty basic. The characters weren’t particularly interesting. We’re all over the whole 3D animation thing. Just gave me nothing to write home about.
Besides the Pixar factor, I’d been excited for Brave for a few reasons. I love Kelly MacDonald so I was ecstatic about that casting choice, esp because we dont often hear her real Scottish accent. Merida seemed like such a fun quirky character. I loved that she was tough, and her frizzed out red curls made me happy. Apparently there’s a version of the trailer floating around that features The Dollyrots – Because I’m Awesome, a fave song from a fave band, and one that is a truly inspired and perfect fit (sadly I never was able to find that trailer. I also was totally in favor of having Billy Connolly’s voice talents, because that is one easily recognizable Scottish voice and the man is hilarious. But even with all these things going for it, it still paled by far in comparison to the majority of the Pixar ouvre. They’ve really gotten too awesome for their own damn good.
Brave – \m/ \m/ \m/