BRAVE: I’ll Be Shooting for My Own Hand

Brave (2012) – The 13th Pixar Animated Feature – Directed by Mark Andrews and Brenda Chapman – Starring Kelly Macdonald, Julie Walters, Billy Connolly, Emma Thompson, Kevin McKidd, Craig Ferguson, Robbie Coltrane, and John Ratzenberger.

In seemingly every conversation I’ve had about BRAVE over the past few months, or in things I’ve heard people say in person, on Facebook or in the theater, the idea has come up that Meridia (Kelly Macdonald) signals some kind of dramatic shift in the “Disney Princess.” People have said things like, they’ll “finally allow a Disney Princess into their house,” or that Disney has “finally made a positive Princess.” That’s all fine and good – it’s not my intent to tell you how to raise your kids, or point out there there are obviously several Disney Princess movies you’ve either not seen or critically misread.

I am here to say that I’ve just about had it with Meridia being called a Disney Princess. I know this probably matters to almost no one and I realize that given Disney owns Pixar that whatever Pixar does is Disney’s, but I like to think that there’s still a separation between what it means to be a “Disney film” and what it means to be a “Pixar film,” even if John Lasseter is now Chief Creative Officer for Walt Disney Animation and some college kid is probably already or soon to get paid to walk around Disney World in a Meridia costume. Perhaps over time a Disney film and a Pixar film will simply become the same thing, but for now, they’re different.

Disney acknowledges this, too. Despite all the talk about Meridia joining the ranks (as of BRAVE’s release, the Wikipedia page for Disney Princesses even mentions its expected, so you know it’s true), Disney’s official Princess site has yet to list Meridia among the ranks.

All of this Disney Princessification of Meridia rubs me wrong, too, because it completely ignores the very excellent TANGLED from two years ago, a film that wonderfully embraced the Disney Princess past while admitting its flaws and decidedly pushing it forward, too. Rapunzel is a great character and TANGLED is a great movie.

In fact, it’s a better movie than BRAVE.

That is not to say that BRAVE is a bad movie, because it is not a bad movie. It’s a good but not great movie. It’s enjoyable and moving, but it also feels oddly derivative and small. With all of the sweeping vistas and epic set-up, the movie’s ultimate focus on a daughter and her mom learning to put aside their differences and find a middle ground – while the mom has been transformed into a bear (we’ll get to it) – is touching but … lacking.

None of this is Meridia’s fault. The Pixar braintrust (so many people write, produce, direct, and generally have a say in these Pixar films it’s hard to think of them as belonging to a singular individual) has created a really great character. The daughter of a Scottish King, Meridia is a Middle Ages version of a tomboy caught by societal expectations.

Meaning, her mother.

All Meridia wants to do is shoot arrows and ride her horse Angus. All her mother wants her to do is be a proper princess – act like a lady, wear fancy clothes, tame her wild hair, and get married to protect the unity of the four clans. Queen Elinor (Emma Thompson) arranges for a contest to be held to marry Meridia off to one of the first-born sons of the other clans. King Fergus (Billy Connolly) is the kind of king who wants to not be bothered with unpleasant things; he loves his daughter and encourages her wild ways, but also doesn’t want to anger Elinor.

The relationship between Elinor and Fergus is a bit of a letdown because it feels like they’ve come out of Sitcom Casting 101 – he’s the loud, boorish, infantile, man and she’s the woman who’s way too good for him. I expect a bit more out of Pixar than to have their characters feel like discarded ideas for Tim Allen, James Belushi, and Kevin James sitcoms. (There’s a hint that the film is going to get into why these women marry these losers when Elinor indicates her own betrothal was not the most ideal of happenings, but then it just lets it fade away.) It’s nice that the focus here is on the child-parent relationship instead of on the husband-wife relationship, but that brings up another reverberation I felt while watching BRAVE.

How To Train Your Dragon takes this same premise of parents trying to pigeonhole their kids into a societal norm, and delivers a much better film.

In the best sequence of the film, Meridia is beside herself at the idea that she’s going to be forced into a marriage with a kid who wins her at a contest, so using the rules to her advantage, she declares herself an entrant in the contest (after she declared the contest would be archery), and “wins” herself. This sends everyone into a tizzy, of course, which leads to Meridia jumping on Angus and taking off for the forest. She comes across a will-o’-the-wisp, which blaze a trail to a witch’s hut, where Meridia gets a potion that will change her mother, and therefore change her own fate.

This is how her mother gets changed into a bear. What occurs from here out is that Meridia has to care for her mother as she tries to undo the damage she’s done. There’s some really nice, really touching scenes between the two as the proper mother is forced to learn how to catch fish. They’ve only got two days to undo the spell by mending the bond that was severed, which Meridia takes to mean fixing the tapestry that she sliced into during a fight with her mom, but really means (or also means, if you prefer) that they need to mend the damage between them and realize they love each other and accept each other, and it’s actually all very touching.

But it’s just not particularly memorable. The mother-daughter bonding is quite nice, but it serves to make the King-clan stuff come off as nonsense. The clans are all mad because no one is telling them what’s going on and Fergus is rather clueless, and all of them feel completely antithetical to Meridia and Elinor in nearly every way, including the most important: the ladies feel like real people and the men feel like what would happen if Vince Vaughn, Ben Stiller, Will Ferrell, and Danny McBride decided to remake Rob Roy. The film would have been better without them.

There’s a back story here of a big, angry bear that was tricked by the witch a long, long time ago but it only really seems to exist so that we can have a big final action sequence.

All of this sounds rather negative, but this doesn’t mean that BRAVE is a bad movie. It has a good message about parents needing to let their kids find their own way, and kids needing to understand that parents are often right, and it’s a solid end that Meridia ends up re-establishing her familial bonds instead of simply gaining a boyfriend. It’s an enjoyable enough movie, with Meridia’s triplet brothers providing some comedy as they’re always playing pranks and getting turned into bears and generally being a nuisance. It’s a stunningly beautiful movie, too, as Pixar’s animation techniques remain at the top of the class. Yet, there’s something off here, too, and the result is a movie I enjoyed watching but neither thrilled me nor challenged me.

BRAVE simply feels too simple, too safe, too unoriginal.

Maybe Meridia is a better character than some of the Disney Princesses, but she’s not in an entirely different class, either. For all of her talk of being independent and not wanting to conform to society’s expectations, after her mother is turned into a bear Meridia becomes the embodiment of those stereotypical gender roles: she becomes a caregiver, she sews, she cooks, and at the end they even damsel-in-distress her, as it’s her mother (in bear form) who defeats the mean, angry bear. The movie’s message that you can be yourself and conform to expected gender roles isn’t a bad one, but it’s not exactly a rousing one, either. I enjoyed that BRAVE didn’t simply give us a “kid is right, parent is wrong” story, and that as much as she conforms to gender roles to help her mom, her mother also sees that there’s real value in Meridia’s atypical abilities to hunt and shoot and be independent.

It speaks to the high quality of Pixar’s films that BRAVE is closer to the studios worst film than its best because any company would be proud to produce BRAVE. For Pixar, though, BRAVE is a bit of a disappointment. This is a good movie, but not a great one, and Pixar’s unbelievable success has led me to expect great ones.

MEN IN BLACK 3: I’d Have No Problem Pimp-Slapping the Shiznit Out of Andy Warhol

Men in Black 3 (2012) – Directed by Barry Sonnenfeld – Starring Will Smith, Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin, Jemaine Clement, Michael Stuhlbarg, Alice Eve, and Emma Thompson.

Sigh.

Will Smith is one of the most successful movie stars in history and he’s earned the right to do whatever he damn well pleases, and I hate when people try to tell other people what they should be doing with their time – this athlete should retire, that musician shouldn’t have gone solo. Bogus. Let people spend their own time their own way.

So I’m not telling Smith what he should or should not be doing. I will say, however, that it is extremely disappointing that after a four-year absence, MEN IN BLACK 3 is the film he chose to came back for, when it’s been rumored he turned down the lead role in Quentin Tarantino’s upcoming Django Unchained. Coming back after a four-year absence to work with one of the top directors in the game, acting in a film that will certainly be unlike anything he’s done before would have sent a powerful message about where Will Smith wants to go as an actor in this next stage of his career. Eternally youthful though he may appear, Smith is now 43 years old, and while that doesn’t mean he’s anywhere close to being finished, when someone this big comes back after four years of being away, the returning film makes a statement.

As far as statements go, MEN IN BLACK 3 isn’t much of one.

I’m always curious to see what trailers a theater puts in front of a movie because it’s usually a pretty good sign of who the theater or studios feel will be watching the film they paid to see. The trailers before MIB3 were very telling: two kids movies (Brave and Madagascar 3), a Tyler Perry movie, and Amazing Spider-Man. The kids movies signify MIB3 is likely to have all-ages appeal, which makes sense. The Tyler Perry movie co-stars Eugene Levy and Denise Richards alongside his Madea character, so it’s a clear attempt to have some racial crossover success for the Madea franchise, which, given that MIB3 stars Smith, one of the most successful racial-crossover actors of all time, makes sense, too. And Amazing is here for the action/summer blockbuster crowd, which makes sense given how much bankable Will Smith is as a box office powerhouse.

So … based on these four trailers, my impression of MIB3 was that it was going to be a family-friendly, racially inclusive, summer blockbuster.

It is definitely all of those things.

It’s also rather boring, childish, simplistic, and in the wake of 2012′s two early cinematic juggernauts, The Hunger Games and The Avengers, staggeringly nostalgic.

Will Smith hasn’t come back and staked his claim to being daring, to being a great actor, to being a meaningful part of the cinematic future.

No, Will Smith has come back to be Dick Clark, hopelessly safe, nostalgic, and designed to make us feel comfortable.

Smith doesn’t deserve all the blame for the dopiness of MIB3, of course. Barry Sonnenfeld’s direction has an air of bored smugness to it, like all he has to do is point his camera and let Smith and Tommy Lee Jones and Rick Baker perform all their old tricks and the money will just come rolling in. Look, I like Smith, I like Jones, I like Josh Brolin, and I like the MEN IN BLACK franchise, but there’s nothing here that’s new or daring or exciting or vibrant. Who’s this movie for, really? Because The Hunger Games and The Avengers just got done showing us that the narrative bar on big money blockbusters has been raised. Never mind all of those idiotic critics who say those movies are without substantial plot or characterization, because they’re too lazy or stupid or elitist to see that there’s a galaxy of difference between what those films are attempting and what a film like MEN IN BLACK 3 delivers.

MEN IN BLACK 3 isn’t bad, but it’s wholly forgettable, and while the narrative decision to go back in time is a clever one, and while the film’s most enjoyable moments involve Josh Brolin channeling Tommy Lee Jones, it also robs us of why we watch the MIB films: seeing Smith and Jones interact. There’s the illusion of honest-to-goodness character growth here, but it almost all involves Smith and Brolin’s Agent K, not Jones’ Agent K.

Agent J and K (Smith and Jones) are still partners and still having the same old issues. Super duper bad guy Boris the Animal (Jemaine Clement) breaks out of his moon prison and comes to Earth to travel back in time to kill Agent K before Agent K arrests him and shoots off his arm. Boris isn’t remotely scary, but if you’re five or six, he’s got a cool visual appearance and he talks with a British accent, so as a Saturday morning cartoon villain, he’s perfectly acceptable.

It’s easy to armchair quarterback, of course, but I think MIB3 would have been better off fully pushing in the direction of a kids’ movie. Smith’s attempt to resurrect his old cocky-but-lovable cinematic persona probably still works for children, but it no longer works for me. After seeing him nod his head and talk loudly and act exasperated and make an outlandish threat for the 857th time, I want something else. Seriously, look at that quote up above in the title: “I’d have no problem pimp-slapping the shiznit out of Andy Warhol.” Smith actually says this. In this movie. In 2012. Smith has become Dick Clark for people who look back fondly on the era when white people started talking like Snoop Dogg.

I don’t know. Do you want to hear anything else about the plot? Why? It doesn’t matter. J goes back to 1969 to save K’s life and attach an alien device to the Apollo 11 rocket. There’s some stupid alien who can see all different timelines and watching him makes me think, “So this is what happened to Mork and Mindy’s baby when he grew up.”

Or grew down.

Don’t look at me like that. You know what I’m talking about.

There’s nothing clever about MEN IN BLACK 3. Nothing much fun unless you’re in the mood to see Will Smith parodying Will Smith, or Josh Brolin doing his Tommy Lee Jones impression. I’ve seen reports that MIB3 cost $375 million to make and I just don’t see it. Rick Baker and his team do their usual bang up job, but there’s nothing fun here with the aliens. Smith manages to get a few laughs, like when he goes back to 1969 and steals a car and then gets mad at the white cops for pulling him over thinking he stole the car just because he’s a black man, when, in fact, he did steal the car – he just didn’t steal it because he was black.

Almost unbelievably, though, I left this dull film actually wanting to see MEN IN BLACK 4. I know. That credit goes to the likability of Smith and Jones, and because when J comes back from the past, K is different. The coldness between them has been thawed now that J knows that K feels responsible for the death of J’s dad. It alters the dynamic between them in a very real way, and I’d like to see a film where Smith and Jones are actual partners instead of antagonistic ones.

MEN IN BLACK 3 is like watching your favorite band from your high school years reunite after a decade apart and put out a new album that sounds like the old stuff from a technical sense, but not an emotional one. It’s like watching an actual band evolve into its own cover band.

LOVE ACTUALLY: The Classic Fool

Love Actually (2003) – Directed by Richard Curtis – Starring Alan Rickman, Emma Thompson, Hugh Grant, Keira Knightley, Colin Firth, Sienna Guillory, Lúcia Moniz, Liam Neeson, Thomas Sangster, Bill Nighy, Gregor Fisher, Martine McCutcheon, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Andrew Lincoln, Laura Linney, Rodrigo Santoro, Kris Marshall, Abdul Salis, Heike Makatsch, Martin Freeman, Joanna Page, Olivia Olson, Billy Bob Thornton, Rowan Atkinson, Claudia Schiffer, Nina Sosanya, Ivana Milicevic, January Jones, Elisha Cuthbert, Shannon Elizabeth, Denise Richards, Lulu Popplewell, and Marcus Brigstocke.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I write a lot of reviews. I don’t like to call them reviews, as you’re probably sick of hearing me say, but reactions because I just want to talk about what I want to talk about.

I’m selfish that way.

Nonetheless, it’s hard for me to just sit and watch a movie. I’ve long since learned to keep my mouth shut while watching a movie with other people (most of the time, at least), but my brain is always humming. There are times when I think of how nice it would be to simply sit and watch a movie and enjoy it without analyzing it.

Which brings us to LOVE ACTUALLY.

I adore Richard Curtis’ love letter to love, and it’s one of the few movies that I can simply sit and watch and enjoy without my brain getting in the way. Yeah, I see the plot holes and contrivances, and I see the weak resolutions and the lack of actual depth, but I don’t care. LOVE ACTUALLY is crisp, funny, and deeply moving. It is impeccably acted, and while Curtis trades any deep examination of love for lighthearted sentimentalism, it doesn’t stop this wonderful film from being ridiculously touching and life-affirming.

That’s code for: it makes me weep uncontrollable tears of happiness.

It’s the rare movie that makes me cry – and I don’t mean getting all lumpy-throated or misty-eyed, but produce actually crying. I don’t think any movie ever hit me as hard as Cinema Paradiso (and if you haven’t seen Giuseppe Tornatore’s masterpiece, get over your hatred of Italians and watch it), but LOVE ACTUALLY does the trick, too. I don’t mean to imply that I’m some kind of robotic bad-ass incapable of emotions, either, but generally that I’m the kind of guy that isn’t going to believe the puppet is real if I can see the strings being pulled by amateurs. Curtis, however, is so deft at manipulating emotions and presents so many separate plots that it allows him to stick to the surface and juggle the highlights around. This style prevents us from really getting to know the Prime Minister (Hugh Grant) or Billy Mack (Bill Nighy), but we get to see them at their most important love-related moments.

By having something like nine separate plots, we’re constantly jumping from one strand to the next. Some subplots are more important than others, but all of them have their moments.

And, you know, here is where I’d normally break the film down and talk about how fantastic Hugh Grant is as David (the Prime Minister) who might humble and stumble at first but has a real strength for protecting the picked-upon, whether it’s his nation or Natalie (the equally fantastic Martine McCutcheon). Or how the relationship between Daniel (Liam Neeson) and Sam (Thomas Sangster) is completely charming, or how Colin’s journey to America is sorta stupid, or how Martin Freeman and Joanna Page are sorta wasted in a cute but repetitive bit, or how I sometimes forget just how wonderful an actress Emma Thompson is until she makes you feel every single tear she sheds when she discovers that her husband (Alan Rickman) gave an expensive piece of jewelry to his hot, young secretary instead of her.

But I’m not going to do it this time. Silly as it sounds when we’re talking about a movie that’s about sharing, I really don’t want to share too much about my thoughts on this film. I don’t want to have to think too hard about it; I’ll over-analyze most everything but like a kid not wanting to hear the truth about Santa Claus for fear that it’ll ruin Christmas, I don’t want to turn my critical eye too sharply towards LOVE ACTUALLY. I just want to adore it. It’s silly, of course, because just like you still get presents after you realize Santa Claus doesn’t have time to visit every kid in the world on one night, and so hires out your parents on a work-for-hire basis, I’m sure LOVE ACTUALLY would still satisfy after I broke it down.

Maybe next year.

Be sure to check out the Holiday Review Index for all the Holiday-themed reviews to be found at Atomic Anxiety.