Brave
Director: Mark Andrews, Brenda Chapman
Cast: Kelly Macdonald, Emma Thompson, Billy Connolly (Animated)
Rated: PG
Running time: 93 minutes
It's nice to live in a time where animated features are rampant in quantity as well as quality and that is due in no small part to Pixar, whose name continues to be a beacon of quality.
So it's no surprise that little ladies across the land are very excited to see the first Pixar film to revolve around a female hero. By now most are familiar enough with Pixar to know the film is going to involve family relationships. This time out it's all about a mother who raises a child to be something the teenager might not exactly be "cool" with.
The film opens with the heroine Merida as a Scottish tomboy princess who wants nothing more than to ride horses, shoot arrows and basically be a rambunctious teenager. Her father (voiced by Billy Connolly) is the giant king of the tribes whom Merida takes after. Her mother, however, has different ideas, doing her best to raise her girl to become the proper princess that tradition requires. Frustrated by this, Merida resorts to a magic potion to change her mother. Well, wouldn't you know it, that doesn't work out too well, with unforeseen complications aplenty.
Like all Pixar films, Brave is remarkably beautiful. From every blade of grass to the most buried background character, no detail is left untouched. And we can't comment on visuals without mentioning the intense beast that is Merida's huge red hair - hair being one of the trickier bits to capture with CGI, but this new technique has it pretty close to awesome.
As for the scary meter: Kids still into Dora may find it a bit scary in parts, but anyone who has outgrown Dora will no doubt find a new friend in Brave.
