BEFORE: Got into it this morning with the cashier at my Tuesday morning deli, where I get an egg sandwich and coffee. I was told that my $10 bill was counterfeit, and they couldn't accept it. Well, I got that bill from my Monday morning bagel place, so how is that MY fault? It's not like I have any resources to test my money when I'm given change, so on top of everything else, now I have to worry about whether the money in my pocket is real? Fortunately I had enough singles to cover, but there must be a better way to deal with this than by blaming the victim. How do I know that egg sandwich is real? Maybe I should buy one at the place across the street for a few weeks, just to teach this cashier something about proper customer relations. I'm playing trivia tonight, so I can probably rid myself of this supposedly-bogus bill by buying a beer. Problem solved.
Linking from "Rango", Bill Nighy was in the great comedy "Still Crazy" with Billy Connolly (last heard in "Pocahontas").
THE PLOT: Determined to make her own path in life, Princess Merida defies a custom that brings chaos to her kingdom. Granted one wish, Merida must rely on her bravery and her archery skills to undo a beastly curse.
AFTER: Eh, I wasn't really feeling this one tonight. I know it was a huge hit for Disney/Pixar last year (sorry, I guess that's two years ago now...) and teen girls were probably all over this, but it didn't really float my boat. Maybe it's because I've switched to the larger TV, which doesn't always read the signal properly from the DVD player during very dark scenes, so unless I keep refreshing the signal by popping up the counter on the screen every 30 seconds, it was often tough for me to tell what was going on in the nighttime scenes.
I don't think I'll ever go to Scotland - it looks very dark there, and people talk funny, and they scream and fight a lot. Or so this film would have me believe. And the men wear funny skirts and they all look like they probably smell bad. Not a great way to sell me on a different culture, by drawing the men all dumb-like and bug-eyed, and the women all screamy and moonfaced, looking like they just got punched.
Yeah, it fits right in with my topic of identity, as Merida has to decide what kind of princess she's going to be - is she going to be the dutiful daughter who gets married off according to her parents' wishes, or the feisty scrappy talk-backy type who decides to think for herself. Take a guess. It's great that she stands up for herself, but the message that's ultimately sent out to the kids is that kids should listen to their parents (which contradicts her independence) and that also, parents should listen more to their kids (which ultimately contradicts the previous point). How completely indecisive non-helpful.
I know, this film claims to be about "Fate" and the changing thereof, but since I'm on the "Identity" theme, I'm just going to roll with that. Besides, identity + purpose = fate, right? Who you are, plus what you go on to do, determines what happens to you. Work with me here, OK?
I may also be harboring a grudge because I had to type up my boss's blog review of this film, and of course he talked about the single biggest twist in the plot, so for me there were no surprises, not really. I won't talk about it myself, just in case you haven't seen the film, because I just can't be that guy who spoils a film, and if my review did that, I just couldn't bear it.
But it stems from a misunderstanding of a spell, in a way that's just silly - you should always ask careful questions about what a potion does, kids. Just because you want it to do one thing doesn't mean it will do that thing. And if any side effects occur, please tell your doctor. Also tell your doctor if you have a history of liver disease or any trouble breathing before using a potion. Some patients experienced heart palpitations, thoughts of suicide and the condition known as "hot dog fingers".
It's also very fuzzy about what has to be done to reverse the effects of the potion - the witch herself was very unclear about that, so several things are tried, and ultimately we don't know which of them worked. So that's just poor storytelling - take Snow White, for example, it was very clear what had to happen to reverse the spell cast on her. Sleeping Beauty, Rumplestiltskin - the magics in those stories all had very clear parameters, reagarding the effects and how to undo them. By all means, if you don't understand how spells work, just try a bunch of different random things, one of them's bound to work, right? Sloppy.
It would have been nice if Merida's archery skills had come back into play - this was introduced at the beginning, was moderately important during the part where her suitors were introduced, and then was never seen again. It just feels like a story thread that failed to get picked up again, where it could/should have been important again at the climax of the film. Instead we just got more people screaming at each other, trying to get them to understand things that they weren't capable of explaining very well. Any time I hear characters making the same arguments over and over, it's a sign of weak story.
Just cue up some more adorable antics from the young brothers, no one will notice. But I did.
Also starring the voices of Kelly Macdonald, Emma Thompson (last seen in "Love Actually"), Julie Walters (last seen in "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2"), Robbie Coltrane (last heard in "Arthur Christmas"), Craig Ferguson (last seen in "Kick-Ass"), Kevin McKidd, John Ratzenberger.
RATING: 4 out of 10 tapestries
"Brave" isn't my favorite Pixar film, but I think it's Pixar's best, and most impressive. They managed to make a princess movie without hitting any of the three exhaustingly dull tropes:
ReplyDelete1) "Pretty princess who needs to be rescued," or
2) "Princess who, gosh, everybody expects to just be pretty and quiet and stay in the castle and she just wants (music swells) ad-VEN-turrrre!"
3) "Badass, kick-ass princess, oh, man, this is so TOTALLY NOT your typical movie princess! Woo! (fistpump) She has, like, armor! And a sword! And she's all stoic and kills guys and then quips."
This is a story about a mother and daughter who can't get through to each other, to their mutual frustration and disappointment. The mother knows why the thing she wants the daughter to do is important, the daughter doesn't, so the daughter does something that screws everything up. Totally all her fault. She now has to go fix everything and partly the answer is to understand exactly what her mother was talking about.
The movie's other remarkable achievement: this is the only Pixar movie that didn't need to be done in animation. There's no reason why this script couldn't have been shot live-action. Every character is a human or an animal. It happens on our planet. That increases the degree of technical difficulty by a factor of...well, all the factor.
As a result, "Brave" can only rely on the storytelling and the performances. I don't think any digitally-animated feature has every shouldered such a challenge. And it all works brilliantly, as far as I'm concerned.
Also: grizzly bear who behaves like a queen is nearly as funny as an elk trying to cross a frozen lake.
Unfotunately, they swung the needle too far in the other direction, IMHO. she's not a proper, prim princess, I get that. But instead she's fussy, short-tempered, impatient and screamy. Did she have to be such a brat? I found it hard to root for her because she was so annoying and could not see any other way but her own.
ReplyDeleteHer mother could only see one way to do things too, but at least was much nicer about it. In a movie that set out to promote compromise, I think they should sought out more middle ground in the characters.
There simply must have been a way to depict a strong confident princess who wasn't also a royal pain in the arse. Find it.