Brave (2012)

The key to Pixar’s success over the course of the last 17 years is that more often than not, their films have been emotionally fearless. The Toy Story trilogy isn’t simply about a collection of toys going on wacky adventures, and movies like Wall-E and Up have a thematic depth that most movies of all kinds could only dream of. At their best, the folks at Pixar don’t settle for mediocrity or even mere affability. They want their films to leave a deep, memorable impact, and normally they have. That’s why it’s so disappointing whenever they stray from greatness; they’ve set the bar unusually high for themselves, and it’s especially crushing to see them retreat from those heights. This is the studio that released the following four films consecutively: Ratatouille, Wall-E, Up and Toy Story 3. That is an absurd run, and I guess it was inevitable that a mild downward trend was coming. Once you reach Everest’s peak, there’s nowhere to go but back to Earth.

People’s first real Pixar disappointment came with last year’s Cars 2, which most dismissed as a film driven by commerce rather than creativity. There’s certainly no accusing their new film Brave of such things—it’s a wholly original property without any product placement that features a predominantly Scottish voice cast—but it’s also not nearly the rousing tale that it could have or probably should have been. Where past Pixar films have been fearless, Brave seems startlingly safe by contrast. There’s almost nothing to hate about the film, but it also never takes the next step into greatness that we’ve come to expect from Pixar’s best films. It’s not a question of what it does wrong, but rather what it is unable to achieve.

The story revolves around Princess Merida (Kelly Macdonald), the teenage (?) daughter of Queen Elinor (Emma Thompson) and King Fergus (Billy Connolly). She has become something of a tomboy, and she only really has fun whenever she’s riding her horse and shooting her bow and arrow. However, as she is the daughter of royalty, her family has other plans for her. Merida is to choose a husband from one of three houses, but she has absolutely zero interest in such things. This is much to the chagrin of the Queen, and Merida thinks her only way out is to convince her mother that marriage isn’t the right thing for her. Witchcraft eventually gets involved, and soon Merida has created a mess that she has to clean up in just a matter of hours.

Brave often feels a like a rock skipping along the surface of the water without any desire to actually dive in. It moves from story beat to story beat efficiently and beautifully, but nothing is given the time it needs to make a more substantial impact. Most of the characters—even the leads—are types more than fully-formed creations. We know their motivations and opinions on the issue of Merida’s role in the kingdom, but we never really know anything about why that is. Or worse yet, where they came from. Pixar is normally superb at giving all their characters compelling background stories, and that’s why it’s slightly surprising to see a film this content with mere broad strokes. The one piece of background we get is a story about a past kingdom that fell apart, but even that is not given a chance to develop. The film expects us to treat this past with all the interest of the events happening in the present, but that’s impossible because we simply don’t know enough about it.

These troublesome details can occasionally get in the way of all that Brave does well, and that is not to be ignored. While it spends far too much time gliding on the surface, it helps that it is one beautiful surface indeed. The animation is stellar, the environments astounding, and whenever it tries to be funny it normally succeeds. (The most consistent comic relief comes courtesy of Merida’s three younger brothers.) In fact, the imaginative visual allure often serves to makes the film’s flaws all the more frustrating. This is very much a world I would like to explore more thoroughly, but the film feels a whole lot less interested in what it has to offer.

Brave is certainly a fun movie more often than not, but it never really clicks into the higher gear that we know Pixar is capable of. Based on some of the rumored production troubles, perhaps this isn’t a surprise. Original director Brenda Chapman apparently set out to make a dark and mature fairy tale, but she was replaced in 2010. I think much of her vision went with her, because there isn’t a whole lot about this movie that’s exceptionally “dark.” (Of course, Toy Story 3 included a group of toys accepting their mortality as they were lowered into a hell-like lava pit, so maybe this just seems cheerful by comparison.) At its weakest, Brave just seems unsure as to what story it should be telling, and how it should be telling it. It has all the ingredients that would make up the next Pixar classic, but it wasn’t given quite enough time in the oven.

Grade: B-