Brave (3-Disc Collector's Edition) (Blu-ray/DVD Combo)

If you're like me you may not watch many animated movies yet you may love animated love movies such as the beautiful art of the The Secret World of Arrietty [Blu-ray + DVD]from Studio Ghibli, or be impressed by Madagascar 3 from Dreamworks. If so, I think you will probably love Brave.

Brave continues Pixar's amazing run becoming the studios 13th movie in a row to open number one at the US Box Office, with a highly impressive $66.7 million opening weekend.

A young redheaded princess named Merida, with a fiery sense of independence, the princess rebels against her princess training. When the queen attempts to marry her off, Merida can barely bear it, takes matters into her own hands, and challenges her suitors in an archery competition, setting events in motion that will change everyone's life.

We have a mysterious woman in the forest who may or may not be a wi..., I mean a woodcarver, and a bad bear. We also have her mischievous brothers. All of them are a bit wild, and Merida is a bit of a tomboy.

The distinctive voice of Billy Connolly voices the overly muscled King, with Emma Thompson playing the svelte queen, other well known actors such as Robbie Coltrane (Cracker) and Craig Ferguson voice the other parts, Julie Walters voices the witch and newcomer Kelly MacDonald does an excellent job voicing Merida.

Setting the tale in Scotland I think adds to it and offers unique opportunities for humor, and developing Merida as a personality who is independent makes her somewhat admirable, rather than the standard depiction of a beautiful princess, which lets face it, is somewhat cliche at this point. I do not usually go to see a Pixar movie unless the premise grabs me, and this one did.

Some people say the movie might be scary for young children, but I think children do need to experience the whole range of emotions, and I personally did not find it scary. I did find it humorous.

I think most people will love it, and I hope this was helpful.

I'll admit 'Brave' doesn't have quite the wall to wall boldness, rule-breaking and sheer brilliance of the very best
of Pixar's work, but I'll still take it over 95% of the Hollywood films I've seen this year. It never bored me, it made
me smile a lot, laugh a little, and was a more touching look at the complexity of mother and daughter
relationships than most 'grown-up' films that try to deal with the subject.

It also has a heroine who is a spunky, tough and first rate advocate for girl power, while still being heart-meltingly vulnerable
at just the right moments.

It has tremendously talented voice actors in Billy Connolly, Kelly Maccdonald, and especially Emma Thompson.

Most important, it has a twist half-way through that takes it in a delightfully unexpected direction. I will admit, for the first
half I was a bit under-whelmed, The film seemed more Disney than Pixar,with 'safe' humor and ideas. Just a touch disappointingly predictable.
But then a witch gets involved in this medieval Scottish tale, and with a twist that's more Shakespearian comedy than Disney, suddenly this is
a new film we haven't seen before. The second half easily won me back over, and I was left feeling, as I always seemed to be, that working
for Pixar must be just about the greatest job in movies.

This is another excellent movie with a fun storyline. We chose this based on the previews we saw of it, and also the fact that the movie was developed by a familiar name -- John Lasseter. This is the same man who also was involved in such storylines as Tangled, The Princess and the Frog, Ratatouille, Up et al. We enjoyed these other movies that were done by him and so we took our chances. I don't think that there is anything more that I can say in regards to how to explain the storyline as others have explained the storyline just fine. My husband and I both had some good laughs out of it and we also thought that the price was not too bad. (Now that the price has gone up because of the Christmas season coming up, I'd wait until after the New Year to get it though, unless you can get it for a more reasonable price somewhere else). We both feel that this is another good investment to our movie library and would recommend it to anyone else that likes these kind of movies. The cinematography was great, the storyline was just as good and for the price I paid for it, it was worth every penny!