Brave

“Brave” is the 2012 animated film from Pixar, and thus becomes the film every parent will make their kids see. The good news is that children may love it, and the bad news is that parents will be disappointed if they’re expecting another Pixar touchdown. Unlike such colorful original films like “Toy Story,” “Finding Nemo,” “WALL-E” and “Up,” this one is Pixar borrowing a page from the traditional story of Disney, its business partner. We have a spirited princess, her mom who is the queen, her dad who is the impatient king, an old witch who lives in the woods, etc.

The princess is Merida, voiced by Peigi Barker, shown in the action-filled introduction as a red-haired Scottish tomboy whose life is changed by a childhood birthday gift of a bow, which quickly makes her want to become the best archer in the kingdom. Then we cut to when Merida is in you marriageable age (Kelly Macdonald), who is shocked by request from Queen Elinor (Emma Thompson) to choose from three possible husbands (Kevin McKidd, Steven Cree and Callum O’Neill) chosen by her kingdom (Robbie Coltrane, Kevin McKidd and Craig Ferguson).

She chooses none of them, especially since all three candidates are idiots. Merida rides off on her horse and rides into the forest, where her friends the will-o-the-wisps lead her to the cottage of a crooked old witch, voiced by Julie Walters. She asks for a magic spell that will change Queen Elinor’s mind, but it changes more than that: It turns Elinor into a bear. I agree with Roger Ebert when he said, “Witches never know how to stop when they're ahead.”

Luckily, the magic spell does have a cure to it. Merida has exactly two days to break the spell. After she and her mother get a grip on what happened, they begin to work together and grow closer than before, and despite that the queen cannot speak. There is one huge problem though. King Fergus, voiced by Billy Connolly, had his leg bitten off by a bear (in the introduction), and has been hateful toward them since then. Unsurprisingly, when he sees his wife as a bear, he doesn’t recognize her.

All the rest goes on. This is a great-looking movie, much brightened by the inspiration of giving Merida three small brothers, little redheaded triplets, voiced by John Hasler. The Scottish Highlands are amazingly painted in surprising detail, and some action with Merida’s archery is more than enough in so many emergencies.

“Brave” has an uplifting message about improving the connection between mothers and daughters, however turning your mom into a bear is completely impossible, unless it’s in animation. Elinor is understandable, under the circumstances. However, Merida is nowhere near being a typical fairy-tale princess. Ebert mentioned, “Having flatly rejected the three suitors proposed by her family, she is apparently prepared to go through life quite happily without a husband, and we can imagine her in later years, a weathered and indomitable Amazon queen, sort of a Boudica for the Scots.” “Brave” looks like it doesn’t deal with her as a girl and makes her into a sort of a token boy.

In the end, people really seemed to have hated this movie, making it feel really underrated. However, when I saw this when it came out in the theaters with my sister, I didn’t hate it at all, and don’t hate it to this day. It’s not one of Pixar’s best, but it’s nowhere being one of the worse, or the absolute worst. I actually think it’s honestly one of the good ones. The reason why is because I understand the story is a typical story that we have seen countless times in other Disney movies, but here there is something bigger than that. It showcases how realistically parents and kids constantly argue over things because they don’t seem to understand one another, but overtime they do come to an understanding. Children will thank their parents after understanding how hard they were on them and parents will realize that there were times that they may had gone too far and will apologize for not understanding what the child was trying to say. This works both ways, if you think about it. Ask any parent and their child this and they’ll tell you that’s exactly what they went through. So I say go out and see this movie and don’t hate on it because it’s actually a good one for the whole family to sit down and watch. Like “Cars 2,” it’s an underrated Pixar movie that was hated, but isn’t as bad as everyone says it is.

Check in tomorrow when we look at the only prequel Pixar ever made (unless they don’t have another prequel decided yet in their plans) in “Disney’s Pixar Month.”