Brave

 Directed by

Mark Andrews, Brenda Chapman, and Steve Purcell

Pixar has made some of the best films (animated or otherwise) of the last quarter century. The Toy Story trilogy. Monsters Inc. Finding Nemo. Ratatouille. Wall-E. Up. Inside Out. The list is thoroughly impressive and even their misses - like Finding Dory, The Incredibles 2, and The Good Dinosaur - all have something going for them. It's gotten to the point where just knowing that Pixar is behind a particular movie indicated a certain level of quality to me and they had never completely failed me.

Until last night, however. 

That's when I watched Brave, their 2012 feature about a teenage princess in a medieval and mythical version of Scotland. I was astounded with the high amount of shit that was transpiring on my television screen.

I nearly quit at the 30 minute mark, but convinced myself to keep going, thinking "Hey, it could get better!" It didn't. I checked the time again after 52 minutes and thought, "Oh, Jesus, there's still 40 minutes to go!" Another time check later on revealed I was only about ten minutes from the end and I sighed with sweet relief. That ten minutes seemed to take about 30, but I made it. The instant the first credit appeared on screen, I quickly hit the "Stop" button on my remote several times - I didn't want to have to watch a second more than necessary. 

* A girl who uses a bow and arrow?! That's silly! *

If you're worried about SPOILERS, I'd suggest skipping the next big chunk of the review as I intend to spoil the shit out this utterly terrible movie. 

Brave tells the story of Merida, the princess of a clan (town? country?) in Scotland, who is shown to be an adventurous and daring young woman who is expertly skilled with a bow and arrow. Merida, being the free spirited and independent person she is, is supremely against the idea of being betrothed to an unknown prince (who can blame her?), but her overbearing mother - Queen Elinor - insists. Mother-daughter spats ensue and, of course, her hapless father - King Fergus - doesn't do a whole lot more than laugh at his daughter's antics, eat, and tell stories about his own great adventures. 

After a particularly bad fight with her mother, Merida rides off away from the castle and happens upon a witch's cottage in the forest. After a short while, the witch offers to sell Merida a spell that will cause Elinor to "change" and not be so steadfast in her wishes to see Merida married off. 

* The magical wisps that lead Merida to the witch. *

Of course, the spell doesn't work like Merida envisions and instead of Elinor simply changing her mind about everything, Elinor literally changes. Into a huge black bear. I repeat, she changes into a bear. Wacky hi-jinks ensue as Merida tries to smuggle Bearinor out of the castle and back to the witch to reverse the spell. Slapstick "comedy" bits abound, such as Bearinor being so large that she can't sit on a bed without it smashing apart. The castle is full of men, vicious hunters and warriors led by Fergus, who chase Bearinor to and fro, somehow always being outsmarted by a teenage girl and a FUCKING BEAR with the mind of the queen. 

I guess I forgot to mention that Fergus - and seemingly everyone in the whole country - absolutely despises bears. I don't care enough to go back now, but just be content in knowing that when Merida was a child, she was almost killed by a giant bear. Fergus lost a leg in the battle, but managed to scare the bear away. Over the next ten years or so - which the film mercilessly decides to skip - that bear is never seen again, but of course, it'll figure into the plot later on. There, I caught you up. 

 

So Merida and Bearinor escape the clueless men, find the witch's cottage, and discover - through a painfully unfunny "comedy" bit using the witch's cauldron as an answering machine - that they have until the "second sunrise" to reverse the spell before Elinor permanently becomes a bear. To reverse the spell, there's a riddle to decipher and the journey to solve it makes no difference because you know everything is going to be fine in the end. 

Now, obviously, Merida and Bearinor are in a bit of a time crunch. They have less than 48 hours to figure out the riddle, but they naturally spend the first four or five hours fishing so they can have breakfast. More "comedy" bits ensue, mostly centered around how bears need to eat a lot and while most bears are naturally good at fishing, Bearinor doesn't know the first thing about fishing using her paws or snout! It's funny! Good times are had by all! And, of course, Merida and Bearinor immediately start bonding and resolving all their differences because, you know, true love or something? Walking a mile in their (bear) shoes? Something profound, I'm sure. 

* Oh, yeah, Merida has three brothers. They're fucking annoying, too. *

The rest of the movie consists of sight gags, more slapstick, Merida convincing her bear-phobic father that the huge black bear in front of him is indeed his formerly lovely wife, more hi-jinks, and a climatic showdown between Merida, Fergus, Bearinor and the giant killer bear (who was also a spell victim - man, that witch really had a thing for turning humans into bears) from all those years before. The bad bear gets crushed by a heavy stone and we get to see his human spirit rise out of the corpse and float away, so I guess that's a happy ending for him? Bearinor is transformed back into Elinor and everyone lives happily every after. Merida doesn't have to get married and her and her mom are BFF's from that day on. 

I kept hoping that the bad bear would maul and kill all the humans while the meek Bearinor had to sit and watch, but, alas, I was disappointed. Just one more disappointment in the 93 minutes of supreme and utter disappointment that was Brave.  

SPOILERS END

The animation is nice looking - though I didn't think it was up to Pixar's ridiculously high standards - and the voice acting was fine (especially the delightful Billy Connolly), but I can't think of much else to praise. 

* Merida and the Bear. It sounds like a shitty 80's sitcom. *

The main problem with the movie is the script, which is full of cliches and is painfully predictable and infantile. After finishing, I looked it up and four writers combined to produce this very short script. Four! I imagine that was part of the problem - too many cooks and whatnot - and if it was a single person's vision or even just a collaboration between two writers, the whole debacle might have been avoided. Brave reminded me of an Illumination movie - full of stupid bits, annoying side characters, and ridiculous site gags centered around bare asses being shown. Seriously there are AT LEAST two different scenes where the audience is forced to see multiple bare animated asses. And another where the bare ass is implied! A Pixar script shouldn't have to stoop to these kinds of levels, but the four hacks responsible for Brave didn't seem to care about quality, standards, or the Pixar legacy. 

Three of the four writers also co-directed the movie and, again, you can really tell. There's no overreaching vision and the scenes just kind of spew forward with very little in the way of coherence or thematic tone. A great director might have been able to save the project, but with the awful script, maybe not. Since the directors were also the writers, you can just blame them for everything and move on with your day. 

I can imagine the pitch when this movie was first conceived - a magical adventure for young girls with a heroine they can look up to! - but the end result is just so viscerally awful that I don't see how anyone could enjoy it. After checking IMDb, though, my fear of how low the movie going public has sank was reinforced once again. A 7.1/10 user score based on over 300,000 votes. I immediately looked at the Metacritic score, hoping that professional film reviewers would be more sensible. They were, but not by much - it's got an average of 69/100 there. And then I was reminded that Brave won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, beating out the far, far, FAR superior Wreck It Ralph and several others that just had to be better. 

So, maybe it was just me - and my wife, who also hated it and wanted to shut it off several different times - who's out of touch. Maybe Brave is a masterpiece and I'm just completely off base and spouting nonsensical madness with this review.

But I don't think so. 

I'd say "Go watch it and see for yourself", but I wouldn't purposely inflict that kind of torture on anyone nice enough to read one of my reviews.