Brave

In 2012, Pixar released Brave, directed by Mark Andrews and Brenda Chapman, Pixar’s first female director. Starring Kelly Macdonald, Billy Connolly, Emma Thompson, Julie Walters, Robbie Coltrane, Kevin McKidd, and Craig Ferguson, the film grossed $539 million. It ended up winning the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film, The Alliance of Women Film Journalists Award for Best Animated Feature and Best Animated Female, The Golden Globe for Best Animated Feature Film and a Grammy for “Learn Me Right,” performed by Mumford & Sons and Birdy. It lost the Annie Award for Best Animated Feature to Wreck-it Ralph.

In the low middle ages, Merida (Macdonald) lives with her father King Fergus (Connolly) and mother Queen Elinor (Thompson) who wants her to marry the eldest son of the head of one of three neighboring clans. But Merida encounters a witch (Walters) in the forest and buys a spell hoping to change her mother’s mind on marriage. But it has unforeseen consequences and Merida must undo it before it becomes permanent.

The Tangled review mentioned how hair is the number one aspect to avoid in 3D animation. The Disney animators didn’t get the memo and neither did Pixar. In fact, they scrapped their entire code and rewrote it from the ground up, just to make sure Merida’s hair was perfect. Such attention to detail further shows why Pixar continues to be one of the greats of animation, even if some plots aren’t that great.

And the plot to this film is actually pretty good, focusing on familial love and repairing broken relationships between a mother and her daughter. In everything that happens with Merida being unwilling to marry for political reasons and Elinor constantly being exasperated with Merida’s adventurous spirit, the two reconciling and finding a way to compromise makes for a good resolution. And it shows how the two come to understand each other. Merida has to use the diplomacy she learned from her mother and Elinor has to rely on her strength as a bear. It shows how the two can use the qualities they don’t often show.

On the other hand, Merida is kind of a mashup of quite a few of the Disney princesses in terms of character. And there’s the flowing landscapes of Scotland. Or what little we see of them. Pixar really didn’t use the highlands to their advantage. We got some of it and we got a lot of forest and ancient ruins. But Scotland is much more than that and the films should really have shown off more than just a couple sequences. Sequences that were rushed to boot.

#27 

Winnie the Pooh

After Lasseter took over, the three previous theatrically released Winnie the Pooh films were stricken from the main canon. However, in 2011, Disney’s 51^st animated film was a part of the franchise aptly named Winnie the Pooh. Starring Jim Cummings, Travis Oates, Tom Kenny, Craig Ferguson, Bud Luckey, Jack Boulter, Kristen Anderson-Lopez, and Wyatt Hall, it was narrated by John Cleese and had music performed by Zooey Deschanel, which were written by the co-writers of Avenue Q. It grossed $44.7 million.

When Pooh (Cummings) runs out of honey, he goes to find some and finds that Eeyore (Luckey) is missing his tail. But when everyone goes to find one, it’s discovered that Christopher Robin has gone away for a while, but left a note and everyone assumes he was captured by a monster called the Backson.

 This film really hearkens back to the 70s and the original film, especially in the characterizations. Everyone is back to their incredibly oblivious selves, highlighting their quirky qualities rather than playing up the negative. Pooh is back to being dim, yet very aware, Piglet isn’t that scared anymore so much as he’s high strung and says the oddest things, Rabbit is still highly on edge, but it’s not about work, Tigger has returned to being the overly confident blowhard and Owl is back to being somewhat smart, but just barely smarter than anyone else. And notice that Gopher isn’t in this. Just like he wasn’t in the books or the first movie.

It’s also much less dramatic than the films from the 90s and 2000s, which can be seen in many of its gags. For instance, at one point, Owl keeps talking about the “issue” at hand and Pooh constantly thinks he’s sneezing. There’s also a point where the gang, sans Piglet, is stuck in a hole and Piglet is trying to get them out. It keeps building on gags that don’t work, like when Piglet finds a rope, but cuts it up for each of them. And yet, it doesn’t occur to anyone that Owl, who is in the pit, can fly. And when he does fly up to encourage Piglet to travel to Christopher Robin’s house, h flies right back and everyone compliments him on the speech. And one of the plots is finding a new tail for Eeyore. And a song is sung every time a new tail is found. Including when Eeyore uses an anchor as one.

Then there’s the plot, which consists of three chapters from the books turned into one coherent story. And with all the scenes that don’t advance the plot, it really enforces that it’s all in Christopher Robin’s imagination.

Better than all the films between this and The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. If there ever was a place to bring the series to a close, this is it.

#39