29 June 2012

Movie Review: Brave

After... well, practically three months of nothing, I now have a post that is topical and current.  Go figure.  Tonight, the family and I plunked down $37.50 to view the newest Pixar movie, Brave  Below is a review, and there may be some slight spoilers ahead.

Contrary to pretty much everything you may think when reading this site, I really love a good movie.  I enjoy having my mind broadened, my emotions put on the roller-coaster, and being able to immerse myself into another place (or time).  Additionally, I am a fan of Pixar movies, though I suppose that goes for roughly 90% of people that watch these movies anyway.  So, off the bat, I'm pretty much predisposed to wanting to see a successful, interesting, and beautiful movie.

Thankfully, this movie is all three.  It starts with the short film that Pixar bundled with the movie, La Luna.  In it are three generations, and the story is as whimsical as one I would expect to find from Studio Ghibli.  It was absolutely a good setup for the movie itself, as it dealt a bit with some of the issues that the movie did.  As odd as it sounds, it was paired nicely with the movie as the short gives a glimpse of generational tension as well as the resolution, and I would definitely recommend it on its own.

The short leads into the movie itself, and off the bat you can tell that Pixar is still doing everything it can to be on the cutting edge of graphics.  It's absolutely amazing to watch, for instance, the original Tron and then to come to watch this (or most other) Pixar movies, and to realize that all of this advancement has happened in my lifetime.  One of the reasons I have not posted is because of Skyrim, so I get to see awesome (and interactive) graphics often, but there's just something special about watching a Pixar movie.  In the last movie, Up, it was all about the balloons and the bird feathers.  This time it was the hair... whoa, the curly red hair.

The second thing that the movie leads off with immediately is the music.  I am partial to Celtic music, and I absolutely loved the soundtrack.  Within the first couple minutes of the movie starting, there's a moment where the soundtrack is cut off due to a tension hook in the movie, and I was really sad for the music to have ended.  Therefore, the tension hook worked like a dream on me.

The story has all of what makes Pixar movies famous.  The comedy relief in the beginning actually sets a sequence in the middle up that expands on the comedy relief and ends up leading to more plot advancement. The main body of the story has to do with yet another Disney princess, but thankfully it's not one of the cloying, singing, annoying kinds.  The relationships in the story are very heartwarming, and it's almost like a Beatles album in that the end kind of goes with the beginning--the aforementioned short.

I am at a bit of a loss for words here, and I'm actually extremely happy about that.  There's a reason that I was able to write as many comments about other movies like Hop or Benjamin Button below, in that I could turn my mind to the analysis part fairly easy.  That requires me to disconnect from the story to some extent, where the story doesn't exactly hold 100% of my attention.  What little you see above is partly because I couldn't rewatch it, but also because I was so extremely engrossed in the story unfolding in front of me that I wanted to concentrate on the story instead of how it was making me feel.

Rating for Brave 3.8 (with a caveat:)
I loved watching this movie on the big screen, the sound was absolutely beautiful, and I would watch it again... at home, where I have the ability to give it time to savor.  I would suggest anyone who enjoys Pixar movies to check it out at the theater, though if the theater experience isn't your thing just wait a while for the DVD... it's a very enjoyable movie.

Now, to figure out if I want to go back a week or so to write that Chipwrecked review...