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Brave: New World?

Not so much, sorry to say.

My husband and I choked back the bile that leaps into the throats of the middle class when the person behind the glass at the movie theater says, “That will be $50, please,” and took our girls to go see Brave this afternoon.

I couldn’t resist the previews — that mane of wild red hair, the bow & arrow, the dramatic, swooshing cloak.  A kids’ Katniss Everdeen, perhaps?  I was probably more excited than my daughters.

The movie did offer a couple of notable departures from the traditional Disney story format, but sadly, too many action-for-action’s sake sequences and plot shortcuts made this latest Pixar flick somewhat saggy and draggy.

We first meet the heroine, Merida (voiced by Kelly Macdonald, a Scottish actress who might be familiar to Harry Potter fans as the Grey Lady from HP7  Pt. 2) when she is but a wee lass, a princess on an outing for her birthday.  She receives a bow and arrow from her father just before the royal family is attacked by a ferocious bear.  Merida’s mother, Queen Elinor (voiced by Emma Thompson), whisks the child away on horseback while the king fights the great beast.

When we next see Merida, she has grown up to be a sassy, willful teenager.  Merida infuriates her mother when she publicly challenges the royal tradition of the local clan lords presenting their first born sons to compete for the princess’ hand in marriage.

During the ensuing fight with her mother, Merida tears a tapestry depicting the royal family and runs away into the woods.  There, she meets a witch who gives her a spell to change her mother, and then the adventure begins.
The rest of the movie explores the broken mother-daughter bond and what must be done to repair it.  I had expected the mother to die in the usual Disney fashion during the bear attack in the opening scene, but instead, the movie breaks new ground by having Elinor live to become the mother of an ungrateful, feisty adolescent.  Refreshing, for Disney anyway.

The movie’s most poignant scenes were of the two main characters trying to reconnect under great duress.  Without giving too much away, my favorite moment was when Merida has to interpret her mother’s non-verbal communication during a tense moment back in the castle.

But these moments were minimized by unnecessarily long scenes of bear chasing, bear fighting, dudes fighting and the kind of Disney clowning and pandemonium that starts to feel condescending after awhile.

My 8-year-old daughters didn’t like the bears and fighting and found those scenes scary.  They weren’t so scared that they had to leave the theater, but the scenes were upsetting enough to distract them from the film’s deeper meaning and from their appreciation of Merida as a gutsy heroine.

Visually, there were many beautiful and artistic moments.  The luminous blue Will-o’-the-wisps that lead Merida through the forest are very fetching, as are a number of the matte illustrations of Scottish landscapes.

The poster above is an example of the look of the moodier scenes, aptly accompanied throughout by Patrick Doyle’s pretty score that includes songs by Mumford & Sons and Scottish singer Julie Fowlis.

If I don’t have to comfort my daughters from bear nightmares tonight, then I just might bring up the movie with them tomorrow to discuss the journey of Merida and her mother.

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Movie review: Up

If you want the short review: yes, go see it.  It’s not the best Pixar movie, but it’s well-worth the price of admission.  There are very poignant moments, imaginative moments, funny moments.  It’s entertaining and offers some good things to discuss with the kids after the movie is over.

Here’s the longer review:

We went to see the 3-D version at the El Capitan theater in Hollywood.  The El Capitan theater is owned by Disney and is right across the street from Graumann’s Chinese Theater, so we got to visit the handprints and footprints.  I was particularly interested in seeing the Harry Potter actors’ prints (they did handprints, footprints and wand prints!).

We saw 101 Dalmatians at the El Capitan back in January 2007 when the movie was refurbished, and we had a great time, so we wanted to make sure to take our daughters there one more time before we leave California at the end of the month.  

When you walk in to take your seat, there is organ music playing.  Then, before the movie, there is a goofy stage show.  So, seeing a movie there is a complete, um, experience.

By the time the movie started, I was exhausted from fighting the crowds and sitting through the stage show and the previews.  But the movie was lovely and worth the wait, the high ticket prices and the crazy crowds.

Up is the story of Carl Fredericksen, a crotchety old man whose house is being threatened by the encroaching city.  Carl is trying to hang onto his house, which is an anchor to memories of his life with his beloved wife Ellie.  

The first 15 minutes or so of the film consists of an elegant recap of Carl’s life from boyhood, when he meets Ellie, all the way through their marriage, life together and Ellie’s death.  The vignettes are emotionally wrenching, but visually subtle.  My 5 1/2 year old daughters understood that Ellie died, for example, but they did not catch that she was unable to bear children, something that was revealed only by an image of Ellie in a doctor’s office, her head in her hands.

This tableau of images worked well to protect young kids from material that was too emotionally sophisticated.  They understood enough of the sad material to make out the plot, I think, but not enough so that they cried as much as I did throughout the film.  Which was about 20 times, darn Disney.

The film’s action begins when Carl engineers a way to escape — with his beloved house — from the city that is about to devour the last tether he has to his past life.  

You’ve seen the previews and ads, so you are already aware that Carl uses his equipment from his days as a balloon man at the zoo to make the house go up, up and away.  Unbeknownst to him, however, is the little boy, Russell, who is an unwitting stowaway on his porch.  

The rest of the film consists of the adventures Carl and Russell have as Carl tries to fulfill his promise to Ellie that one day, he will relocate the house to Paradise Falls, a destination Ellie had longed to visit her entire life.

The adventure section of the film was rollicking, funny and imaginative.  I loved Kevin the bird and Dug the dog.  Some of the plot gets a little unbelievable (like the unlikely ability of an old man to hang on to a hose dangling in the air below a house; or the age difference between Carl and the movie’s villain Charles F. Muntz — Muntz was an adult, maybe in his 30s, when Carl was a child, so seeing them both as similarly-aged old men was confusing; what happened to Russell’s father, and who was his mother?)

The last thing I’ll add is that 3-D is not my favorite way to see a movie.  Those glasses gave me a headache, and I just couldn’t get used to them.  I took them off, put them on, focused and re-focused my eyes; even when I had a couple of minutes when the effect worked for me, I just couldn’t understand the purpose.  The 3-D doesn’t make the visuals more appealing or real for me.  I guess I am just not hip enough to appreciate it or something; maybe I don’t play enough video games, but I like a well-done 2-D movie just fine, thank you very much.

All in all, I’m glad we had the opportunity to see Up on the big screen.  I’ve thought about the movie a lot in the last few days, something that, for me, means that the movie has some sticking power.  The emotions and poignancy of the film still resonate, my girls and I are still talking about how funny Dug the dog was, and my daughter Dinah thinks the head bad dog, Alpha, was handsome.  

But that’s another story.