Scotch missed

Rating: 5/10 (29 November 2014)

"Brave" as in "Scotland The..."? Just wondering how Pixar justified this latest "snappy" one-word title which otherwise tells us little or nothing about the film. While I'm carping about names, as a Scot, I also don't recognise the name "Merida" as being authentic, seems to me there are plenty of nice Scottish girl names that could have been used for the new Disney princess at the heart of the feature.
Anyway onto the film which for me was a disappointment compared to other Pixar releases. Of course the animation is sumptuous, the detail in some of it is truly wondrous to behold particularly in the depictions of the rugged beauty of the Scottish Highland glens, especially when it's raining or catching the greyness of the cliffs, but the story here lacks magic, at least in the movie-magic sense.
I just wasn't taken with the whole bear-transfiguration thing at all and that the film lacked a traditional Disney baddie for the heroine to play up against. And while on the subject of tradition wouldn't it have been more Disney-like if the transformed bad-bear Mordu had changed back to human form at the end to become Merida's Prince Charming? While one or two songs appear intermittently, they, for all their use of pipes and drums, are nonetheless insipid and are easily forgotten.
As for the voices, while I commend the use of actual Scottish voices in the main for pretty much all the characters, the use of the over-familiar Billy Connolly as the blustery King seemed wrong to me. There are some humorous touches but the big laughs this time are elusive and the perennial cute-factor characters of Merida's three younger brothers barely registers either.
I really had high hopes for "Brave" but in the end was somewhat underwhelmed by the film. It just seemed to lack the verve, humour and charm of many of its Pixar predecessors.
A "Brave" failure in point of fact.