1. All things Pixar. 2. Misleading Marketing. 3. Merida rocks!

Rating: 10/10 (1 July 2012)

Let me say right off the bat that I thought this was a great film. Just like any other Pixar film, it kept me invested and it elicited a whole range of emotions and reactions from me. It looked wonderful, the characters were beautifully drawn and developed, it was hilarious without being cheesy, it was suspenseful when it needed to be, but it had its extremely sweet and touching moments.
Nevertheless, I totally went in expecting a different movie; and I blame the movie's marketing for it! The trailers had me pumped for a darker, more mature and more epic story with higher stakes and more realistic consequences. Thinking back on it, I'm not sure why I fell into that trap. This was a Pixar movie after all - and Pixar wasn't about to make it's film inaccessible to kids!
Let me explain why I was misled. I've watched every trailer for this movie, and after watching it, I must say that the trailers reveal information regarding only about the first 20 minutes of the film. We did know that there was some type of spell involved, but we were never told what it would do. My cousin and I had talked about this; and we had our guesses. And we were right. Not going to spoil it here; but that should have tipped me off that this was going to be a kid's movie.
Many people will disagree that this is a kid's movie because there are some scenes that are legitimately too scary for kids. Hence the PG rating. I'm not talking about the scary sequences when I say this is a kid's movie. I'm talking about the logic; and this film follows a very kid-movie logic with kid-movie stakes and kid-movie consequences. That's not a bad thing at all. It's just that the trailers had set us up for something much more mature and more epic. The trailers focused so heavily on how Merida broke tradition, that I had really come to expect more focus on the consequences of that. And the movie does start out on a very mature note. But then at one point it starts to go down the kid- movie path, once you realize that the scale of the story is pretty small. No grand adventure where she scales mountains of 10th century Scotland and conquers her destiny like the trailers would have us believe. There was an adventure, yes, but of kid's movie proportions.
I can't explain this in the context of Brave without spoilers. So I shall explain this in the context of Up (spoiler warning for Up). The first 15 minutes of Up had some of the best story-telling I had ever seen. It had a lot of gravity and a lot of depth; and then the fun adventure that followed - with houses floating away on balloons, and dogs that can voice their thoughts through a machine, scary dogs with chipmunk voices, and a cartoony villain - had a completely different tone to it. The first 15 minutes and the rest of the movie are like two different movies. You get tuned for something mature, but then you have to readjust your expectations really fast, because you realize Up isn't about an old man dealing with the emptiness in his heart as much as it is about a fun family-friendly adventure with a senior citizen, a little Asian kid, a dog and a giant bird. The same thing happens with Brave.
I just wish they hadn't marketed it so much to an older audience. Mirror Mirror did the same thing. That movie should have just marketed itself to little girls instead of to teens, and then it wouldn't have received so much hate; because in my opinion, Mirror Mirror was a good film for little girls. It had a positive and empowering message as well.
Brave fares much better than Mirror Mirror though just because it's Pixar. Pixar can always deliver a fun heartwarming tale (pretend that Cars 2 didn't happen). It was awesome in the way only a Pixar movie can be; and it had one of the best cast of characters I've seen. And Merida was honestly a rocking heroine. Her animation gorgeous - and not just her hair, but all of her movements were spectacular!
Thankfully I was able to reorient my expectations in time to enjoy the lovely cinematography and heart warming tale; and so this movie gets a 10 on 10. But if you've heard people say that this will be one of Pixar's forgettable flicks, I can't totally disagree, and that will be because Pixar picked the wrong way to hype up this film. But Princess Merida, you keep rocking, girl! Pixar's first female protagonist definitely delivers!