I went to see Brave yesterday with my wife and my mother in law. No, that isn’t the opening line to a bad joke, it’s the opening line to bad review of the movie, Brave.

Brave is, in a word, fantastic. The pacing is a wee bit off at points, but that’s about my only complaint. The plot is fairly complex, the action is suspenseful, and the music is simply inspired. This is the only movie I’ve ever left thinking that I need to own a copy of the movie itself and the soundtrack as fast a possible. And in the spirit of a movie about two strong women, I’m going to frame the rest of my review based on the Insightful Things My Wife Pointed Out.

My wife, for those of you who don’t know, is a genius. I, for those who don’t know (which must mean they haven’t been reading me long), am opinionated. Based on that dynamic, the headings that follow should be credited to my wife. The rest depending on whether or not you like, can be credited to her or blamed on me as appropriate.

Pixar Movies are aging as we do.

I hadn’t consciously noticed before, but Pixar is aging. When I was a kid, it came out with Toy Story. I love Toy Story, but it was a kids movie. Brave is not a kids movie. The plot is actually kind of twisty, and I think it would be easy to get lost with all the moving parts. Furthermore, Brave would have scared the crap out of the child Reluctant Liberal. There are parts that are simply scary in a way that Sid never was.

And Brave isn’t exactly unique in this way. Up and Wall-E both had a lot in them to appeal to older viewers. It seems that Pixar knows that its original fans are willing to stay loyal, and its working with that.

Children’s movies have more tightly constructed plots.

Like I said, the plot in Brave is could easily confuse a six year old. Elements that are introduced earlier take on unexpected significance all over the place. And that seems to happen a lot more in kids movies than it does in movies for adults. I have no idea why. Maybe the effort required for animation makes every detail more thoughtful. What I do know is many movies seem like a random, barely connected string of occurrences, and even fairly well constructed movies will only play with a detail or two at most to make them significant. And movies are becoming longer. Wouldn’t it make more sense to save in production cost and just be a little more efficient with story telling?

Celtic Disney Movie Equals Awesome.

Okay, the phrasing is mine, but my wife did tell me long before we’d heard of brave that Disney should do a Celtic princess movie. Sure, she wanted Irish Celtic and not Scottish Celtic and she wanted it to be a musical, but the principal was spot on. The music in Brave was fantastic and the Scottish (which, when you think about it, is very close to Irish) backdrop was hysterical. Honestly, I still want an Irish princess movie because this Celtic movie was so fantastic.

In summation: Brave is a good movie and you should go watch it and my wife is a genius. The end.