The setup: On the rugged Scottish highlands, Princess Merida (Kelly Macdonald) chafes under the watchful eye of her mother, elegant Queen Elinor (Emma Thompson). This is one tale of parent-child conflict that doesn’t end with the chastened parent admitting that Junior was right all along … far from it. I would go so far as to call it, to an extent, a commentary on or critique of the “Junior Knows Best” trope.
(The DreamWorks vibe is enhanced by the Scots burrs, and even by King Fergus’ massive build and peg leg, all familiar from How to Train Your Dragon.) There is even a Corset Lament scene in which the heroine gasps that she can’t breathe while her mother declares the restrictive gown “perfect.”īut then comes a twist that makes the familiar first act prologue, and Brave becomes a very different movie indeed. Indeed, for the first half hour or so, Brave plays much like a movie of that sort: a movie more like what I expect from DreamWorks than what I hope for from Pixar. Pixar’s willingness to take a film from one director and give it to another has worked in the past (moving Ratatouille from Jan Pinkava to Brad Bird was, I’m convinced, the right move), but taking Pixar’s first woman director off their first girl-centric film seemed off to many.įinally, the American trailers, alas, made Brave look like yet another retread of the overworn theme of a headstrong, rebellious young protagonist resisting a domineering parent’s vision of the child’s future - a theme all too familiar from everything from The Little Mermaid to How to Train Your Dragon. Then it was announced that writer-director Brenda Chapman (one of three directors on The Prince of Egypt and head of story on The Lion King), slated to be the first woman to direct a Pixar film, had been removed over creative differences and replaced with Mark Andrews. (Have minimalist names like John Carter, The Muppets and Winnie the Pooh helped or hurt those films at the box office?) I thought The Bear and the Bow lovely and evocative, and while Up struck me as a daringly unconventional title, a trend toward such terse titles could quickly become dull. First came word that the original title, The Bear and the Bow, had been scuttled for another one-word concept title like Up or Tangled.
Speed bumps on Brave’s path to the screen raised further concerns.
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