The film revolves around Princess Merida (MacDonold) who is a skilled archer and impetuous daughter of King Fergus (Connolly) and Queen Elinor (Thompson). Determined to carve her own path in life, Merida defies an age-old custom sacred to the uproarious lords of the land. Her actions to change her destiny have devastating consequences that forces her to discover the meaning of true bravery in order to undo a beastly curse before it's too late. I am going to start with the voice cast. Macdonald does a really good job as Merida, her performance is convincing and her character is likeable. My only problem with her is that her accent starts to get annoying about two thirds of the way through. The rest of the cast is hilarious, Billy Connolly is always funny, and they use that really well in this film. That's probably the best bit of this film, the humour, there's Scottish related humour and just general funniness. I understand why people were complaining about this film. The first act of this film is really good, it's funny, we get to know all of the characters and the plot is established; but after Merida's actions cause a turn in the story, the whole thing starts to go down hill. I mean the whole story plummets. It picks up again towards the end, but it isn't without its noticeable plot holes.
To make the complex visuals possible, Pixar has to completely rewrite its animation system for the first time in twenty five years. It is the first film to use the Dolby Atmos sound format. All the effort on Pixar's behalf was definitely worth it. The films looks brilliant. Especially Merida's hair, which I heard was what they spent the most time on, it's probably the most realistic looking thing in this film. When you compare other Pixar films to 'Brave', you can clearly see how high quality the computer animation is. The 3D aspect wasn't as good as it could have been. It has a few good moments but the 3D is mostly used to give the film depth.
Proceeding the film is a short film entitled 'La Luna', directed by Enrico Casarosa. This short film is surprisingly good, I will probably give it its own review sometimes this week, but I will say that it is the most original thing I've seen in a while and the computer-animation is really good.
So to sum up, it is a really good film, I wasn't looking forward to it, I was prepared for something as bad as 'Cars 2', but I was more than pleasantly surprised. It is really funny, the story is alright, the voice acting is nigh on spot on. It also has some good action scenes, lots of swords and shooting arrows. I am going to give 'Brave' a 7.5/10. I just really hope that they don't sequel it to death like the do with most of their films.
You say the hair is the most realistic part...where have you ever seen hair like THAT?? :p
ReplyDeleteWhat I mean is that it's layered. All the rest of the characters seem to have a shape placed on their head with some lines in it. Whereas with Merida's, it actually looks remotely like real hair.
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