Brave -- Pixar's 2012 release

UP would have been better if it had only been 15 minutes long

tbh WALL*E kind of fell apart in the third act

on balance, i think that pixar is great with openings, pretty darn good with act twos, and falls to sentimentality at endings.

I think even I liked "Up" better than this. I can't pinpoint exactly which element felt the most ported in to satisfy some studio note or demo. BELATED SPOILERS!!!!The evil bear and its backstory? The three triplets? The three twins turning into bears? The random witch? The quest/fight or her hand in marriage? Stumbling bear LOLs? I'm amazed they didn't give her a Will O' Wisp as a cute sidekick, though they practically did. That torn tapestry that needs to be sewn together is like a metaphor for the movie. Also, I thought the concluding sentimental resolution/bear fight was totally unearned and dishonest, even for Disney.

the three triplets were awesome! I thought they would be bratty but they were great

Yeah, but they're clearly just there to further slapstick things up. I mean, they don't even have names, do they?

the slapstick was well done I thought, the sort of thing you just can't do w/ live action

Tell that to the Stooges.

I liked this thread better when we were laughing at Wrongo McBloggingpants, less so now that we're just engaging Josh so that he can say how much he disliked the movie in minutely different ways.

ILX is a neverending disappointment.

Here Josh, let me respond to that for you: Much like "Brave," amirite?

You guys don't know what it feels like to have your heart broken. Sniff...

the more i think about this, the more i like it

On a slightly more personal level, as the parent of two small daughters, I'm just looking for a movie that'll strike the same right chords for them that many of my childhood favorites struck for me. As Hollywood seems to have stopped making quality live action films for kids, Pixar is virtually all I've got, so I admit I hold them to a high standard.

so ridiculous to call the bear thing a mid-point spoiler or w/e. it's basically the entire movie. what a terrible ad campaign this had (including the title change)

The triplets names are mentioned at the start, if not in the trailer! Hubert, Hamish and... Harris? I thought this was great, btw. Looked mindblowing. Saw it in 3d and the projection was not great, made a dark movie too dark. Would happily watch again in 2d.

Just saw Madagascar 3. I take it back. Brave is a masterpiece.

If I have to hear the 'circus afro' line in Chris Rock's screech again, I will actually kill a zebra.

my student played this, this morning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e21dN7d01Dc

Brave is a masterpiece.

I knew you would see the light. ^_^

i saw this again, and it held together much better now that i knew where the plot was headed from the beginning. it really is cool that the mother figure is essentially a second protagonist, and that her hopes/concerns/fears are taken as seriously as merida's. i was also able to accept the "our land is imbued with magic and we are part of the land" premise without as much grumbling this time, mostly because i love the sound the will-o-wisps make -- like a baby whispering and inhaling.

also if you know someone who likes "call me maybe" this is a great way to make them angry at you:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBmFT4sLCSA

mostly because i love the sound the will-o-wisps make -- like a baby whispering and inhaling.

The wisps were very Miyazaki like. Is it Spirited Away or Princess Mononoke that has similarly sweetly muttering sprites?

Man, seriously though, if I had stumbled into a 3D screening of the manic "Madagascar 3," it might have made me barf. I saw a review that accurately described it as a bunch of brightly colored moving shapes. It does have its moments of "Pig in the City" weirdness, though, and as a couple of friends pointed out there is this surreal druggy undercurrent.

Also, further proof - crossover with Wes Anderson thread - that Noah Baumbach is not funny enough to punch up a comedy. One of the better gags involves a boy getting stuck head-first up an elephant's butt.

Purgatory is endless loop of Madagascar movies for you, Josh; the worst are the ones that died in storyboard

The evil bear and its backstory? The three triplets? The three twins turning into bears? The random witch? The quest/fight or her hand in marriage? Stumbling bear LOLs?

this sounds fantastic!

^^^^

it is a really good! honestly, i think a lot of the criticism abt. story story clichés (girl proving herself, etc.) are rooted in a really ingrained sexism w/r/t the narrative structure; there's an implication in many of the negative reviews that an archetypal female coming-of-age/self-advocating story is trite and unworthy. but the film is at its very root about myth, legend, folk tradition, etc., and more about the telling than the tale.

Otm, and I think a lot of the hand-wringing about the demise of Pixar isn't just coincidental with its first female-centric film,l. Did people freak out with Cars 2, or were they just, Oh Lasseterpaws?

Ha, you mean the first female-centric Pixar film that fired its female director mid-development?

Oh, and people freaked the fuck out about Cars 2. Far more than they have for Brave.

Ha, you mean the first female-centric Pixar film that fired its female director mid-development?

This keeps getting brought up, but nothing I've read about it smells of any anti-woman shenanigans.

Pixar's recent run of movies has been disappointing: two sequels and two below par original stories, Brave being one of them. Brave is a Disney princess movie without songs. It's okay, but it's a bit muddled, a bit slap-dash. The animation of Merida's hair is the only outstanding thing about the film, and maybe people expect too much of Pixar, but Brave just isn't up to anywhere near their best.

that is hardly empirical

it is a really good! honestly, i think a lot of the criticism abt. story story clichés (girl proving herself, etc.) are rooted in a really ingrained sexism w/r/t the narrative structure; there's an implication in many of the negative reviews that an archetypal female coming-of-age/self-advocating story is trite and unworthy.

This. Guys who are like "mother/daughter relationship, ugh, cliche" should have to name five films off the top of their heads that focus on that. I've seen very few Pixar films all the way through, so I can't say whether it's up to the gold standard, but I liked it more than Toy Story and Up - all had great characterization, jokes, heart tugging, set pieces, but this one didn't have a fucked up message about the sanctity of your material possessions or turn a character into a murderer just to provide an action climax.

Also, I loved how every guy in this film was a well-intentioned oaf.

obv not in a place to say for sure, but i wonder if the identity/empathy issues were a little mature for small kids. saw it with my wife and sister and both were affected by it, but for all I know there are young girls who wanted it to just be a bad-ass tomboy adventure as much as a lot of adult men did.

It's hardly about their relationship, or barely. It's really just another story of royalty rebelling from destiny or whatever. Tangled had a more complex mother/daughter relationship.

^^ this post is madness, the entire thing is about their relationship! even ignoring the fact that half of the movie is literally a mother and daughter traveling around together, note how easily all the other tribe leaders agree to do away with the old marriage rule -- it's a mere blip in the narrative, because the actual story is about the mother and daughter learning to respect each others' strengths and point-of-view.

i did like that tangled showed a competitive mother/daughter relationship, but the ultimate moral of that story was "you mom is controlling and won't let you do what you want? thank god you have a REAL mother out there who has been gracefully loving you all along!" with brave, it's more like "your mom is controlling and won't let you do what you want? well she has some geopolitical reasons for doing so, but yeah eventually she'll realize that you're right about some things and will defer you to respectfully, and pretty soon you'll start seeing where she was coming from re: that geopolitical stuff, and anyway no matter what you do she'll love you and protect you."

I totally get that. I just meant that it did not seem to be about a mother/daughter relationship, specifically. It could have just as easily been about a father and a son, or a father and a daughter, or a mother and a son, that's all. That's why I felt it a little pro forma. I've seen the "rebellious kid doesn't want to be set up for marriage by parents" thing in plenty of other movies. "I want to marry for LOVE!" Not sure how this one was different.

What I didn't like about this is that the mother (as bear) actually caves to her kid's concerns with no real impetus. That is, the daughter had every reason to feel guilty: she turned her mom into a bear. But the mom? Why did she suddenly decide to compromise, to concede the marriage rule she had been pushing could go?

Honestly, I'd be happy to see it a second time, but my two daughters have absolutely no interest in seeing it again.

I'd go with you because I've recently been itching to see it again.

But the mom? Why did she suddenly decide to compromise, to concede the marriage rule she had been pushing could go?

Stockholm syndrome.

I think she probably just thought, oh shit, my daughter cares so much about this she turned me into a bear! But then used her valuable tomboy skills to teach me to catch fish! I should let her follow her heart!

heh, i agree that part shows some exceedingly fast character growth. a generous interpretation is that the queen was impressed by merida striding in there and addressing the situation in such a queen-ly fashion, behaving in a way that was both self-sacrificing and earnestly concerned for the good of the country, and she thought merida was equipped enough to be a proper queen apart from that particular tradition.

wow, how shitty was this. what a terrible, terrible film.

sort of Cars for girls I guess. tons and tons of talking, no honesty, would be explorations of gender roles that pivot in on themselves foolishly, bad emotional manipulation, ugly anachronisms, LOOK A BAD GUY. The real shame is that somewhere in this would-be-Tangled mess there's a really compelling, complex myth: mom loved you and was your advocate and now she's being lost, becoming an unknowable beast and mom and dad are going to kill each other over you and you're to blame. Real interesting opportunity and they piss it away on bad shuck and jive and musical montages. Deeply disappointing. Probably my new least favorite pixar.

really wish i couldn't point at and blame steve purcell but i think he's somewhat culpable here.

utterly disposable secondary characters. inappropriate comedy pieces thrown in at the wrong moments. out of control pacing. a "time for the audience to cry" scene that felt devoid of feeling. forced character development. you can absolutely see where this thing got beat to pieces in rewrites and lost its heart.

the opening cartoon was, per usual, utterly wonderful but man i left this all but furious.

stupidly predictable plot twists. one of the best things about pixar is that they always step to the table smarter and more considered of their story than you are. This is the first time I saw the entire third act in my head before it played out. so much audience pandering!

I wonder, though, whether any of the foregoing critics who’ve tolerantly yawned at Pixar’s latest effort could name a Disney princess besides Mulan whose mother is alive, let alone named.
It’s almost as if the critics have missed the constitutive element of the Princess Story in its capacity as cultural and commercial myth. As if the omnipresent witch/evil stepmother doesn’t capitalize on precisely that fictional hole—the vacuum left by an absent mother. e.g. Bambi, Star Wars, Star Trek, Hugo, you name it.

And yet, in Brave, there is a live mother, named and all. And then a remarkably boring thing happens: this interloping mother who has no place in this ordinary, predictable princess story suddenly becomes central to it. She gets turned into something that keeps on getting misread as a monster, something her loving and well-meaning husband has dedicated his life to tracking down and killing for the sake of his own story, which is built around victory and revenge.

It’s a bit as if, having heard the word “princess,” the reviewers all stopped listening and missed Brave’s real project, which is to quietly but determinedly recuperate the “princess story” from some of the qualities for which it’s been so universally condemned.

From this review, which I'm still read ATM.

*reading

I'll read that but can't help but think that the intention of this is less important than the impossibly flawed way it was presented