Brave, movie review

 Name : Brave

Year : 2012

Production companies: Walt Disney Pictures & Pixar animation studios

He we are, back with a review, but this time with a movie review and more precisely an animated movie review!

Synopsis: “Merida, a Scottish princess whose interests include archery and horse riding, is told by her mother that her interests are not what a princess should be doing and that she has to marry. But Merida chooses to defy her mother. And when she and her mother have an argument Merida rides off and meets a witch. She asks for a spell to change her mother. And the witch gives her a cake which she gives to her mother but the change is not what she was hoping for. So she tries to find a way to fix it.”

As usual, we’ll start with the trailer:

Brave is one of my favorite movies so far. I agree that the story is not that original but the setting, the landscapes and the beauty of Scotland won my heart.

First I loved how they don’t try to picture Merida as a perfect princess, she’s a simple person with flaws, and she has a chubby and curvy figure, far away from the Disney princesses’ standards. She dresses like a lady but act like a man, she’s a tomboy and her only love is her bow and her arrows.

She’s strong; she doesn’t need anybody, especially not a man. But at the same time, she’s just a teenager going though crazy phases and teen crisis.

Merida’s only wish is her freedom, to be single, to not marry a guy that she doesn’t love to help her kingdom. This is what the movie is about: Freedom, self-esteem, acceptance, family, blood ties. All Merida wants is…

We follow Merida’s journey, her mistakes and how she tries to fix what she has done (while trying to change her Mother opinion about her wedding she changes her as bear). During this trip, we discover wonderful landscapes that I would die to visit one day. All of this seems authentic. From Merida’s single hair to the way she shot her arrows.

Disney proves us again that a girl doesn’t need to be in love to have a great story (girl power!). Even when Merida encounters the Big bad bear, Mor’du, she fights and find a way to save her mother. Don’t laugh but at first I thought that the bear was going to change back into a prince, I was influenced by older stories like The princess and the frog or The little mermaid, where the couple and true love can end an enchantment.

This is also the case here, but here, the true love is the love between a mother and her daughter, their sentimental and blood ties. This story is a great tale with a good moral too.

To sum up I would say that this movie is a “must-seen” for every Disney lover : it pictures Scotland as the land of your dreams and show little girls all around the word that you can be a princess without a crown and that you can be a queen without marrying the first man you encounters (Cinderella, Snow white etc) 

You can be a tomboy and achieve great things. 

To be honest “When I grow up I want to ” be Merida.

Thanks for reading, hope you'll like this review, I'll try to find other movies to write about! See you in a while!

Sources of the gifs : here and here