This evening, I went to see Brave with wife and friend, and I’ll admit that all of us went in not knowing what to expect. The previews all largely left the viewer wondering. Basically, a girl is being forced into a life she doesn’t want to live, so she wants to change her “fate”. First though, let’s step back to the Pixar “short” the movie started with.

The short is called “La Luna”, and it basically is about 3 generations of Moon “cleaners”. The idea being the moon collects star pieces (al la Mario Galaxy), and these cleaners head up there and sweep them all away, or to the side, which is what gives us different moon phases. It was an adorable little short, rather than being more humorously bent, it was more sentimental. As typical with Pixar shorts, it, by itself, justifies part of the ticket price in and of itself.

Back to the movie! So, basically, the trailers for the movie largely center around the first 20 minutes of the movie or so. The rest of the movie takes a relatively predictable path, yet not quite what one would expect. If you don’t want any semblance of spoilers, don’t expand the following. [DDET SPOILERS!]Anyway, the daughter is being fixed to be married. She doesn’t like this, runs off to change this, and ends up having a witch change it for her. This then results in her mother being “changed”, and a joint adventure ensues to get the mother back to how she was, and in the process, both grow. So basically, it is kind of similar to Shrek, or maybe some Mulan, or any other number of movies.[/DDET]

That said, Pixar gives its usual beauty and flavor to the movie, though I found the movie less humorous that previous Pixar movies (many of which seem to have a good amount of humor aimed at the adults in the crowd, which this had minimal). The acting was good, the score was well done, and the animation as usual was excellent. I am sure I’ll see it again on DVD, and I may enjoy it more, but for now, I’d rate it right around “UP”… enjoyable, but perhaps not a Pixar “classic”. Which, is a shame, given its standing as the first with a female protagonist ((actually, you could argue the 3 most important characters in the movie were female: Merida (the star), Elinor (her mother), and the witch)) ((My wife tells me this is very Wiccan/Neopagan symbology-wise with the Mother, Maiden, Crone (wikipedia) )).

[xrr rating=3.75/5]