Review of the movie Brave

********CONTAINS SPOILERS******

The gist of the story is that Scottish princess Merida is supposed to marry a man from one of the other 3 clans.  They all gather to compete for her hand in a contest of strength and weapons proficiency.  The final test is archery and Merida breaks tradition by competing for her own hand and besting all 3 of the contenders with her superior archery skills.  Her mother, however, is very angry about this and they have an argument.  Merida runs off into the woods where she finds a witch's cottage.  She asks the witch to give her a spell that will change her mother.  The witch puts a potion into a cake which Merida gives her mother.  When her mother eats the cake, she turns into a bear. 

This is especially disastrous because Merida's father lost his leg in a fight with a bear and has been hunting it ever since.  So Merida tries to hide her mother from her father while searching for a way to reverse the spell.  The whole experience brings mother and daughter closer, and it all ends in a battle where Merida stands between her father and mother to protect her mother (the father believes its the bear who took his leg), and they all work together to kill the real bear.  The spell is broken and Merida's parents and the other clans accept that she will not marry one of the other men unless they win her heart. 

There were a lot of great things about this movie:

A strong female character- physically, mentally, emotionally
A moral to the story- mother and daughter both learn to listen to each other and gain greater respect and understanding for each other
It doesn't revolve around marriage/love- even though it was the attempt to arrange her marriage that sparked the rest of the story, most of the story is about her growing up and her relationship with her mother.  In the end she it is left open as to whether or not she will ever marry one of those men or at all.  (Not that there is anything wrong with stories about marriage and love, just that it has become a tired old storyline and little girls need to see there are other things to life). 

 
There was one thing that I was disappointed about however.

All the men in the movie were bumbling idiots.

The three men she was supposed to choose from for a husband were dorky and weak.  Even her father who was a king and a brave warrior was clearly whipped by his overbearing wife, right down to saying the cliche "Yes, dear."

This is disappointing for two reasons.  First of all, it's insulting to men.  I don't mind the occasional goofy character (male or female) in a movie. After all, it's that variety of personalities that keeps things interesting, and it can be especially fun when it's overly exaggerated for a kids' movie.  But this movie had 3 female characters and about 100 male characters (most of them warriors from the other clans), and not one of the men was intelligent.  I see this trend too often in sitcoms and movies that try to give women a more prominent, intelligent, strong role.  They swing too far the other way and make all the male characters weak, wimpy and stupid.  

The other reason it bothers me is that it is insulting to women too.  It implies that women could not be the brave, strong, intelligent characters in the story if there was a man to fill that role.  For example, Merida was an excellent shot with a bow, but the three men she was competing against weren't much competition either.  She wasn't interested in marrying any of them, but it leaves you wondering if one of them had been a Prince Charming might she have fallen for him?  

I've only seen two animated movies that did a decent job of portraying strong female AND male characters, and those are Tangled and Mulan.  The men in those movies were strong, handsome, intelligent characters, and that didn't detract at all from Rapunzel and Mulan being strong, brave and intelligent in their own rights.  Of course, they ended up getting married, which was fine for those stories.  Brave could have been better, though, if there had been a strong male character, and the story was STILL about Merida and her growth and relationship with her mother.  She could have still chosen not to get married, at least not right now.  At the very least, her father could have been a stronger character.

Overall, I gave it 3.5 stars.  It lost a star for it's lack of strong male characters.  It lost half a star for the witchcraft, which I don't like being portrayed so cavalierly, but at least it showed in the end that witchcraft was not the solution.