The new movie from Disney and Pixar is out. It’s the thirteenth movie release for the
Pixar company, but with so much good quality from the studio already does it
hold up as well as many of its predecessors?
Let’s see. This review does have
full spoilers.
First off the look of this film is breathtaking. The landscape is detailed and there was
wonderful use of lighting in the sunrise and sunset scenes. There was also some great use of computer
animation with Merida’s hair. That’s
something I don’t think I’ve ever seen in a traditional 2D animated movie,
least the animators be driven insane by the level of detail required to animate
every strand of hair like that. The movements
of Elinor after she is transformed into a bear are very true to life and great
to watch. The music here is really nice
and I like the use of Gaelic singing.
Plot wise I like the mother daughter relationship and that
it’s the focus of the family. Often in
princess movies, when we actually do have two parents such as Disney’s Sleeping Beauty, the mother is basically
there to do nothing and it’s the king and the princess who are at odds. Here Elinor really is a strong character in
her own right. We see how she takes
control when the clan leaders get into arguments. How they look to her to make decisions and
respect her authority. She’s not just
there to sit at the side of the king and be a pretty figurehead. The problem is that that is all Merida sees
her as. She sees the prim and proper
ways she is supposed to do things and none of the strength that it takes to do
it. Also I like that we got some flashbacks of Merida and her mother when she
was little, so we see that Elinor really does love her daughter, just as she
says in the cross-cutting conversation, which I love, she just isn’t really
listening to Merida and so Merida just gets the message that her mother doesn’t
care about her as a person, just as the role she plays in the kingdom. What I like best of all I think about this is
that there was growth from both sides.
Unlike Ariel and her father or Jasmine and her father, where only the
parent had to grow and learn to let their child go to live their own life, here
both child and parent had to change.
They both need to learn to listen and appreciate the other. I would have liked to have seen a little bit
more development of this rather than just the fishing scene, so Elinor’s
response of wanting to brake tradition to let her daughter choose for love
would seem to come a bit less out of no-where, but overall the whole mother daughter
struggle is great in its execution.
I like the Merida and the prince in the legend are connected
by their fates of being the first born children. Being the first born girl traps Merida in the
place of being basically a dowry to appease the other tribes. She is a prize to be won, as another Disney princess
put it. While the prince in the legend saw
his right as the first born taken away from him. As the oldest he should be the one to get the
kingdom not to have to share it with his brothers. It was nice to actually see him die in the
film too. I thought he was going to be
transformed back somehow for the happy ending so that was actually a good
surprise.
Despite all the good things there are elements that I didn't care
for in this film. I don’t like the
triplet brothers at all. Yes, they help
get Merida and her mother out of the castle, but other than that they really
didn’t serve a purpose other than comic relief that I frankly would have
liked to have seen less of in the film.
The only really fun gag I thought was when they tied their father’s leg
to the table. And why did they have to
go for low brow butt gags in here? Guys,
your film is riding on the strengths of the characters you don’t need to
undermine that with stupid humour for the trailer.
Like I said in my Avengers
review I again have the problem of some of the action being so close up that I
can’t tell what exactly is going on. Which
since I keep seeing it in so many movies is probably a product of wanting a
certain look for the 3D; if that is not the case please feel free to correct
me. If it is though it just makes me
even more impatient for the 3D fad to hurry up and die so filmmakers will stop
doing stuff that serves no other purpose, but to look good in 3D.
For the theme of the film I initially didn’t get it right
after leaving the theatre because I thought that, from the title of the film,
this would have something to do with going on a quest and being brave against
an outside force, which is often the case in these stories. With this film though there’s the nice
message about being brave in what is often the hardest way:
self-reflection. Of being able to think
about your actions, view things from other people’s perspective, and to put
aside pride and be able to admit that yes you were wrong and take responsibility
for your actions. In the beginning
Merida is more concerned about her own feelings and wants to do her own thing
no matter the cost to anyone else, and she won’t take responsibility for the
curse on her mother. She wanted the
witch to give her a spell, she went through with the plan, and she cared more
about her mother changing her mind than about her mother’s well-being. By the end though Merida sees that she was
wrong, both in her words and in her actions towards her mother, and is
remorseful.
One other thing I would like to comment on is the short La
Luna that played before the film. I
really love that Pixar is bringing back the idea of the short cartoon. I know it doesn’t quite work as well as it
used to as the entire format of watching films has changed in the last century that
the medium has been around, but I’ve always enjoyed them. Whether they’re Disney shorts or the Warner
Brother shorts they are a ton of fun to see and it’s great that at least one
film company thinks so too. So I love
the idea of shorts in general, but I also really enjoyed this short because it
was an interesting idea of the men cleaning the stars off the moon to create a
new phase; and because it ties in thematically with the feature
presentation. Both were about family,
one about a daughter and mother and one about a kid, his dad, and his grandfather. The glowing effect of the stars was gorgeous
and I really liked the credits too where they looked like kids drawing made in
pencil crayon as it kind of is like a bedtime a parent might tell their kid
about why the moon looks different at night sometimes.
All together is it as great as some of the other films by
Pixar, no, but it’s still a very solid movie and I think surpasses some early efforts
by Pixar, including Cars and its sequel. It looks great, it sounds great. Its theme is interesting and told well with
the relationship of Merida and Elinor that works on the whole. I would highly recommend seeing it.
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