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For me, the film never sinks to Dreamworks-style hokum but it does become awfully banal in the second half. The emphasis on the mother/daughter overcoming the conflict is refreshing, but I would have preferred more time was spent developing a confrontation with the Mor'du creature instead of stressing the wackiness of the supporting characters or shoehorning in a free will message at the most inopportune time. The visuals are great but it is lesser Pixar to be sure.

Today at work I overheard this bit of a conversation between a boy (who was probably around 8 years old) and his father:

DAD: But you liked Tangled, right?
SPENCER: Yeah, but Brave is SO MUCH BETTER. You know why? Because Merida doesn't even want to be a princess. She wants to be an archer. And you know what? She doesn't become a princess.
DAD: Well, I think she's a princess anyway, she just finds a different way of doing it.
SPENCER: Yeah, she just does it a different way. She's way better than Rapunzel or Jasmine or the Little Mermaid. The Little Mermaid is so stupid!
DAD: Spencer!
SPENCER: What, SHE IS! All she wants is the stupid prince!

So true.
On the other end, she still is an egoistical brat who just wants to be freeeeeeee as the wiiiiiiind (and has a freaking song about it).

As much as it's nice to see Brave twisting a bit the clichés, it still pretty bothersome to fall afterwards in an other pool of clichés ("you have to make compromise in your life, but still follow your heart and make what's right to live the dream forever after with everyone happy and enjoy what you have you might lose it blah blah blah" :-& ).

Worst part is, of course, that not much drives Brave forward. The first 45 minutes are fun, right, but nothing happens, especially because most of the characters are not very inspired. At best, they give nice running gags, at worst, they're just tiring.

But after these 45 minutes which at least entertain, you go into the mother - daughter part of the movie, these last 45 minutes being an absolute bore where, again, really nothing happens. It's all very un-original and not very entertaining, because everything is clearly deja-vu.

Then, you get the awful scene of Merida's speech in front of everyone, a wild last thrill before the end, then, the melting pot of clichés as an epilogue.

I think that, in the end, it's really the characters that I felt as awfully flat that preventing me to really enjoy the movie.

To be simple, I found Cars 2 more refreshing. And least to say, Brave is far away from Pixar's best.

So, Disney has apparently decided that Merida is going to join the "Disney Princess Royal Court", complete with with thinned out body and blander face, and formal dress that the character hated and broke in about three minutes.



This seems a bit gross to me, both in that it seems like it's ignoring the specifics of the character, and more broadly in the sense that the Disney brand identity is going totally to engulf Pixar- like, the most repellent thing about Disney in general to me is the princess shit and how unavoidable it is even for kids with whose parents don't want them stuck with the crappy gendering the princesses reinforce, and making Pixar a piece of that just seems worrying.

(also of note: in the Target promotion from which I got that ad, buying Brave gets you a Merida doll, buying Tangled gets you a Rapunzel, buying Cinderella gets you Cinderella, and buying Mulan gets you... Cinderella.)

For whatever it's worth, there is now a change.org petition protesting Merida's makeover for the Disney Princess brand.