Brave

Brave

Disney/Pixar Animation Studios, 2012

Directed by Mark Andrews and Brenda Chapman

Starring: Kelly MacDonald, Emma Thompson, Billy Connolly (Voices)

Three and a half stars 

It's no secret that Pixar is the most consistently solid studio in Hollywood: ever since they burst onto the scene with 1995's Toy Story, the storytellers and animators at Pixar Animation Studios have challenged the boundaries of animation, served as a constant pillar for heartfelt and innovative storytelling, and created some of the most beloved films and franchises of our time. At their best, almost no one can touch them: the Toy Story trilogy is the most critically acclaimed film franchise of all time; Finding Nemo redefined what voice acting could be for an animated movie (thanks largely to Ellen DeGeneres who, despite Academy rules, should have won an Oscar for her work there); Monster's Inc. set a benchmark for boundless imagination that has rarely been duplicated; and Up and Wall-E, though I find both less consistently wonderful than the aforementioned titles, each began by flirting with silent film elements and delivered sizable emotional punches in the process. Hell, even when Pixar has fallen short of their customary originality and transcendentalism, the results (namely the Cars films and A Bug's Life) have stood up to (and often surpassed) the ones that Dreamworks or Disney (on their own) were making at the same time.

 It's also no secret that Pixar is a well-oiled machine, delivering one full-length feature every summer, no more, no less. When that one film captures the minds of audiences and critics alike, the result has often been the most well-reviewed film of the year, and recently, has even netted the studio a pair of Best Picture nominations. But when the result is a disappointment, like with last year's misguided Cars sequel, the wait between projects seems to stretch on for much longer than usual. Last summer, when Cars 2 became the first Pixar feature to earn a "rotten" rating from review aggregate Rotten Tomatoes (and the first to receive zero Oscar nominations), moviegoers and critics everywhere began speculating about what that first crack in the facade meant for the world's most consistent studio. Was the Pixar golden age at an end? Certainly no streak can last forever, but the moment Pixar's fell, the sense that they were untouchable, like they could do no wrong, was shattered, and critics began to realize that kicking them around was actually a viable option. This brings me, at last, to Brave, Pixar's latest full-length feature, the first to feature a heroine in the lead role, and unlucky number 13 in their oeuvre.

When the reviews for Brave started rolling in, even I was ready to speculate that Pixar was on the downswing. That's not because Brave has received the level of mixed to poor reviews that Cars 2 did, but because I have, over the course of my life, become so accustomed to seeing everything the studio touches turn to solid gold that seeing their projects get anything less than unanimously perfect reviews is still a bit of a shock. I took those reviews and I bought into the negative hype. But they say that the best way to enter a movie is with lowered expectations, and so I found myself as I sat down in the theater Sunday afternoon for my first viewing of Brave. Too often, by the time the credits roll on the year's most critically acclaimed films, I find myself wondering what I missed, where the great film I read about was, and why all the flaws that I noticed had been looked over; too often, my enjoyment of a film is sabotaged by the hype and by my own expectations. But after experiencing just over an hour and a half of what is, rather doubtlessly, the most gorgeous animated film ever put to celluloid, I had the opposite reaction: there hasn't been enough hype for Brave.

Perhaps it's because Brave doesn't quite reach the level of originality that has been pivotal to Pixar's past work, the level of how-the-hell-did-they-think-of-that brilliance that runs back and forth through films like Monsters or Toy Story. And indeed, while Brave does carry a ton of Pixar's trademark comedy and heart, its ideas are a bit more straightforward than those that have served as backbone for the studio's true masterworks. Perhaps the "good-but-not-great" critical response to Brave has been a result of people who just can't wrap their heads around the fact that, yes, we have kinda sorta seen this story play out before. But then again, each Pixar movie has, at its barest essentials, covered universal themes, and that's no different here. Just like Toy Story, this is a film about growing up, about the things we love that we take for granted right up until the moment that we almost lose them; like Nemo, it depicts a relationship between a parent and a child that is tested and reborn through struggle and adventure; and just like Toy Story 3 and Up and Wall-E and every other movie this studio has made, it has a handful of moments that hit tremendously hard.

On the whole, Brave is more of a throwback to classic Disney Princess movies than it is to the rest of Pixar's innovative track record, but that's not a bad thing. The movies it collects inspiration from, ranging from Snow White to Sleeping Beauty to Mulan, are all terrific, classics even, and Brave stands among them easily. Blending its baffling animation with a gorgeous score of Gaelic music and a terrific cast of characters (including a notably strong heroine in Merida, since its about time Pixar had a female lead), I can't recall enjoying many Pixar films more than Brave on first viewing (the Toy Story films and Finding Nemo excepted), nor have I been so thoroughly pleased, moved, or enraptured by any film I've seen so far this year. To me, it feels like a collision of the timelessness of the hand-drawn Disney classics and the fierce creativity and heart that has defined all of Pixar's films, movies that have carried me along from childhood, into adolescence, and finally onto adulthood: movies that are near and dear to my heart. Needless to say, that it fits among that legacy at all is praise enough for Brave; that it surpasses some of it is one of the highest commendations that can be given in modern film.

There has always been this sort of unspoken belief in the film industry that animated movies can't be "serious art," that these films are made for kids and they can't possibly measure up to the works that are showered with big awards recognition at the end of each year. But that's not true, and right from the beginning, Pixar Animation Studios have spent every one of their films proving that. Sure, these movies can be enjoyed by kids: the audience I saw this movie with was at least 60% children, and they all loved it. But I've always felt that Pixar is not aiming at the kids: they're aiming for the parents, they're aiming for the film buffs, and they're aiming for my generation, the generation that fell in love with the first Toy Story in the first days of its original release, the generation that has been there with them every step of the way, growing up alongside Pixar, their films, and their characters, and finding new pieces of wisdom every time we sit down to watch a new feature or revisit an old one. Because in every Pixar movie, there are themes or moments that can only be fully appreciated with age, with time, and with experience. It's a gift that we have an animation studio so thoroughly committed to making great films that are resonant across all age groups, and it's a testament to their high level of work that I have never seen two people rank their output in the same order. Some may say that the Cars 2 debacle and the less-than-perfect reviews for Brave are a sign that the studio is weakening, but on the contrary, I'd rank Brave as one of their most enjoyable films to date...if not one of their best, and that deserves celebrating.

*Note: As is customary with Pixar features, a short film plays before Brave. The wide-eyed wonder of this year's version, a beautifully rendered short called La Luna, is not to be missed, so make sure you show up in time to catch it - even if you have to sit through a bevy of terrible previews first.