Brave - Review

So, there's this little animation company...you may have heard of them. Pixar.  A company constantly raising the bar for the evolution of animated films.  Everyone has a favorite film and everyone can agree that even the films they may not like are oozing with professionalism and fantastic concepts.  So, seeing Brave was a bit of a no brainer.  It's a great film that didn't quite do what I was hoping it would do.  But raises the bar none-the-less.

Speaking of animation, did I mention that Pixar created software specifically to deal with the hair of the main character alone?  That may not mean much to those who know very little about animation, but even if you don't realize the little details Pixar does to improve upon itself you will still notice it for sure.  All those little things add up to create a masterful work of animated art.

But Destructus, you say.  Earlier you said it didn't do what you hoped it would do, yet you sound like you really enjoyed it.  Well, I really did appreciate the animation and I did greatly enjoy the characters and the story may have been a little thin but a thin story doesn't take away my enjoyment from a film.  Perhaps I should explain...

The story centers on a princess who is being forced to live according to her parents opinions of how things should be, never allowing her to have a mind of her own.  In hopes of changing her moms mind about being forced to marry one of the prince's from the other 3 kingdoms she buys a magic spell from a witch in order to change her situation.  The spell has a bit of a side-effect in that it turns her mom the Queen into a bear.  And that's where the story somewhat lost my interest.  Pixar has created a vibrant world, easily one of the best looking worlds they have ever done.  But besides a couple trips to the woods we spend most of the film behind the castle walls as the young princess tries to protect her mom who is now a bear from being hunted and killed, meanwhile also working to reverse the spell she put upon her.  It seems a greatly missed opportunity to me.  It would have been a much more interesting film had they allowed the characters to explore the world they live in more. To see interesting environments and perhaps dive a bit deeper into Celtic mythology.  Sadly, that didn't happen.

Overall, it was a beautiful film that Pixar did an amazing job on, but is much too confined when there was so much more than could have been done to make this a more epic adventure.  On a side note, as I was watching the film it did feel a bit more like a Disney film than a Pixar film to me.  Much more kid friendly, with less humor for adults than in previous Pixar films. It's still there, but not as prevailant.