Kelly Macdonald voices Merida, the feisty, flame-haired Princess whose tomboyish interest in archery is indulged by her doting father, the King (Billy Connolly), but frowned upon by her strict mother, the Queen (Emma Thompson). It also resembles the robust Viking world of lovably grumpy clan chiefs and wimpy kids in another DreamWorks animation, How to Train Your Dragon. The fantasy Highland setting is effectively extrapolated from the Scottish accent Mike Myers put on back in 2001 playing the curmudgeonly Shrek in the DreamWorks animation, occupying very much the same sort of landscape. Brave has a certain inoffensive charm, sometimes, but it is often bafflingly uninteresting as a story. Even the short film that precedes the feature – traditionally a tiny delicious treat in any Pixar programme – is treacly and dull. It feels like a standard issue super-sophisticated Pixar movie with the super-sophistication removed. It is eerily bland, with none of the zingingly funny lines and smart self-awareness we've come to expect from Pixar yet it doesn't obviously appear to be pitched at very young kids, either, and doesn't quite have the necessary unforced simplicity. It looks as if their script has been reworked pretty often, though perhaps not quite often enough. Brave is written and directed by Mark Andrews, one-time story supervisor on Ratatouille and The Incredibles, and Brenda Chapman, director of The Prince of Egypt.
T his animated family movie – set in the olden dayes of Scotland – gives us a worrying glimpse of the Disney/Pixar "ideas" fuel gauge, whose needle is twitching further and further leftward towards the "E".
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