Stays too safe

Rating: 3/10 (12 June 2019)

For a movie that's supposed to be questioning gender roles, it never shows Merida doing anything incredibly "masculine" compared with other Disney princesses. Mulan does a far better job of that. The humor is also extremely childish, and none of the characters have any dimensional personality aside from Merida and her mother.
It has an amazing setting, but it lacks its own unique story. Everything about it seems borrowed from Mulan, Robin Hood, Princess and the Frog, and probably more. The one fresh aspect, the child challenging the parents, is never really shown in a way to convince the viewer that the two really have changed to see each other's viewpoint. Disney then remedied that by having a much better story in Inside Out, making Brave entirely obsolete.