Saturday was a miserable weather day, what with “climate change” working its magic and all. We initially wanted to head out to the local beach, but it was more overcast than not so it wasn’t really good beach weather. Additionally, Sunday was supposed to be a good beach day, so we changed course Saturday and opted for an afternoon run to the movies.
Thus, we came to see Brave.
While it was an entertaining movie, I don’t think it quite lives up to some of the other Pixar efforts like The Incredibles or Up. To me, I think it had a lot to do with the title itself. A title like “Brave” conveys the notion that the story is striving for something more than just telling the story of Merida. Whereas, with Up and The Incredibles, it sounds like you’re going to see stories and end up getting much more. I suppose it’s a matter of expectation, in one case they’re at a lower level of entertainment, for the other I’m expecting more.
While Brave is a lot of fun to watch and the story is certainly well told, it’s the “more” where it falls short. The idea is that someone doesn’t need to accept the fate they’ve been given, and they can change it if they are brave enough. As I said, in as far as this telling is done, they certainly hit the necessary plot points.
But a fairy tale is marked by it’s happy ending and most of the enduring fairy tales leverage the good versus bad tactic towards this end. Think of most any of the other Disney fairy tales: Snow White and the evil Queen, Sleeping Beauty and the evil fairy, Cinderella and her evil Stepmother and Step sisters. The happiness arises as a result of good ultimately triumphing over evil. Sometimes, it’s even the result of someone being brave enough to not except the fate that their evil antagonist has selected for them.
In Brave, the conflict arises because of differences between Merida and her Queen mother, whom is most definitely not evil. She is simply a strong willed woman who doesn’t see why the life she has been given isn’t good enough for her daughter. My guess is that story plays out all the time in real life.
And perhaps that’s where Brave loses me a bit. The story is driven by the conflict between Merida and her Mother. Without giving any details away, it boils down to Merida owning up to her mistakes and trying to undo the acts she undertook to free herself from the path her Mother has set for her. It is a fundamentally different type of fairy tale, perhaps one that is too mature for the target audience. Merida’s actions really should have had more dire consequences, a la Katniss in The Hunger Games trilogy, in order to push it into a class of it’s own.
The bottom line is that, it’s an entertaining and worthwhile story to experience with the kids but I don’t think it will measure up as a true classic.