Review No.169: Brave

As I've previously discussed summer time is synonymous with the animated film and over the past decade the majority of the quality animation has been delivered by the Pixar studios ever since the first Toy Story film was released they have more hits than misses with a flawless record only spoilt by the two average Cars films and Ratatouille a film others seemed to like but I personally didn't care for. After Cars 2 was generally derided by critics last year they were due for a strong turn and have released Brave a Scottish-set fable starring Kelly MacDonald as Merida a tomboy who is also a princess daughter of warrior King Fergus and traditional Queen Elinor voiced respectively by Billy Connelly and Emma Thompson. As a teenage girl Princess Merida would much rather be aiming her bow and arrow than getting dressed up in order to choose her suitor however her mother informs her that tradition comes first. When all the warring Scottish lord descent on the castle their sons compete for Merida's hand through an archery contest though when she conceals her identity, takes part and wins she angers her mother who believes that her daughter has disrespected all that she stands for. Annoyed at her mother Merida travels into the forest and comes across a witch's cottage where inside she is given a potion that she believes will change her mothers mind but actually ends up transforming The Queen into a bear. This isn't the best thing in the world that could happen as her father is currently looking for the bear that tried to kill his family and is under the belief that his wife is the bear in question so another journey into the woods with her mother is called for however she gets a cryptic message from the witch. As is always the way with these animated tales all of our characters must learn lessons about breaking tradition, knowing what it is to be a family and about how sometimes our stubborn natures could cost us dearly. 

The good news then is that Brave is better than Cars 2 however for me it lacked the emotional resonance of Up, the sheer bravery of Wall-E or the end of an era that was Toy Story 3. In a way Brave doesn't feel like a Pixar film but rather more of a traditional Disney animation with a simple story and a strong central heroine which you can add to the recent parade of female role models which also included the leads in Tangled and The Princess and The Frog. Indeed the only thing separating Brave from being a classic Disney film is that the characters don't sing however there are several sequences set to music that are sung by Julie Fowlis with a third composed and performed by Mumford and Sons all of which I quite enjoyed. As you would expect from a Pixar films the characters are, on the whole, well-crafted with the flame-haired teenage princess a very relatable figure for a lot of the film's audience with Merida also being well voiced by Kelly MacDonald though at times I felt that she sounded more like a woman than a young girl. Connelly and Thompson both bring life into their respective royals while Julie Walters is also great in her two scenes as the witch my only criticism is that I wished they done more with her. The animation is also absolutely tremendous with the studio sculpting this glorious medieval highland in great detail and really bringing every aspect of it to life. It is the story of Brave that lets it down though and for me it dips when The Queen is turned into a bear with the closing bear hunt scenes also feeling a bit weak. Brave is also at a disadvantage in that Dreamworks have already done a Scottish film, albeit it one that had a slightly different look, in How to Train Your Dragon with Scottish comic Craig Ferguson featuring in both though. Even though Brave may be on the lower end of Pixar's spectrum it still has plenty going for it - the characters, the animation and the music are all spot on however I think the story just lacked a little bit of the magic that is usually present throughout the films produced by the studio. I think fans of the earlier work will be happy that sequels to favourites such as Finding Nemo and Monsters Inc. are imminent but for me I feel they should be concentrating on original stories as Brave did show promise even if it did fall slightly short. 

Verdict: As you would expect from Pixar, Brave sounds and looks great with some brilliant characters let down by an uneven story nevertheless it is still enjoyable on the whole so therefore it receives a 7/10

Review No.18: The Decoy Bride

The thing with this blog is that I would watch films that I probably wouldn't have picked otherwise, Mercenaries is a case in point, and just like that film The Decoy Bride seems like a movie that would go straight to DVD. Maybe it's because it has some big names in there with David Tennant and Alice Eve playing a couple who are about to get married but she is constantly hounded by the press as she is one of the world's most famous actresses. To dissuade the paparazzi they travel to a small Hebiedean island which Tennant's author James previously wrote about although it turns out that he googled all of his research and never actually went there despite this book being what Lara fell in love with in in the first place. Lara's 'people', played by Ugly Betty's Michael Urie and screenwriter Sally Phillips, have to put together the dream castle that she imagined from the book but even then the press arrive so these two pick a local girl to become her decoy but surprise surprise these two end up married instead. This girl is Katie a girl whose returned to the island following a unsuccessful career on the mainland working on an online trouser magazine and finds herself the only unmarried female in a world with no young men left. You can then really make your own mind and join the dots to what happens next but the film does include a scene in which two deaf people dance to Tennant playing the bagpipes badly.

If that above scene is something you've always wanted to see then The Decoy Bride might be for you if not then there's very little going on here. This is by no means a bad film but the best compliment I can lavish upon it is that it is quite easy-going and uncomplicated. The thing I couldn't get past is that the two central characters are fairly unlikeable Katie is self-loathing and unmotivated while not very attentive to her dying mother while James has written a best-selling book by plagiarising most of his material. In fact the most likeable of the three leads is Eve's Lara who isn't the spoilt movie-star but rather a caring, poetic girl who helps one of the islanders live out her dream in fact The Decoy Bride would be better if James was escaping a woman who wasn't very likeable rather than this charming saint-like beautiful actress. The best parts are the comic agents played by Phillips and Urie the latter playing an approximation of his character Mark from Ugly Betty these two get all the asides and his campy nature lends itself well to a film that is fairly slow elsewhere. There is a lot of wasted talent though both James Fleet and Dylan Moran aren't on screen long enough and the natives of the island are all clichéd oddballs. So a romance between two characters who deserve each other and a comedy that made me smile but never laugh and I'm sure this is meant to be a great British romcom.

Verdict: For an average uncomplicated romcom it gets a standard 4/10