Brave

Sunday, I went with my and two youngest boys to watch Brave. I had mixed expectations going into the movie. I expected a decent amount of goofiness, similar to How to Train Your Dragon. After reading a review I saw linked on Twitter, I forget by who now (fail), I expected a standard Disney princess movie. The movie was made by Pixar, and although I don't generally love Pixar movies, they are reliably good enough to warrant watching at least once. In the end, I could sum all of this up and say I expected, at the very least, to be entertained.

How did Brave live up to my expectations? Well, there was plenty of humor along the lines of How to Train Your Dragon. I won't give away any spoilers, but the trailers can give you a fair idea of the kind of humor to expect, and unlike a lot of movies, the trailers don't give away all of the best scenes. =) Brave is not a standard Disney princess movie. Although it does have some elements of a princess movie, it misses others. One of the most noticeable elements missing is the prince. I admit to sitting through the entire movie wondering who the prince would be, how he'd be written in (and I saw spots where he could easily have been worked in), etc, but he never appeared. Brave was not a fairy tale search for true love--and face it most princess movies end up being about this even when they say they aren't. In spite of Brave's failure to meet this expectation (although some of my readers may see this as a good thing, the little girl in me who loves to dress up in pretty princess dresses and prance around and be spoiled by my soul mate still enjoys a good princess movie as unrealistic as they are), I still enjoyed the movie. As expected, Brave was good enough to warrant watching at least once. In fact, it will probably rank fairly high among Pixar movies--at least by my standards. In the end, all of this can be summed up to say that I was quite entertained by Brave.

Compliments to watching this movie... I have also decided that my husband and I are going to retire to Scotland in the next 20-25 years. I had made it clear to him the next time we move, it was going to have to be somewhere with cooler weather (nothing over 70 please) with mountains (the more rugged the better). We'd been bouncing around ideas for places to look at--no rush since, you know, 20-25 years is a good ways away. While watching the opening minutes of Brave it occurred to me that I could get exactly what I wanted in Scotland, and why hadn't I thought of looking outside of the United States in the first place? My decision was made about as quickly (and probably as rashly) as Flynn deciding he would have to have a castle in his first scene in the movie Tangled--love that movie by the way. For now, my husband is humoring me. Will this happen? I guess we'll see in about 20 years from now. XD