New On Blu-Ray BRAVE

Even just a few years ago you could get away with saying that an okay Pixar film was still better than everyone else's animated films. That's just not true anymore. The animation industry has seriously stepped up its storytelling game in recent years, with all major studios putting out quality, original animated films every few months. And so we've entered an age where an okay Pixar film is, well, an okay animated film. But that's all industry competition talk that's less a reflection on the film and more on the change in the animation landscape.

Regardless of what other animated films came out this year, Brave just isn't a particularly great film. It has odd tonal shifts in its comedy, which flips from juvenile sight gags to heavy mother-daughter conflicts and back again. Once magic is introduced to the story, though, it realigns with the normal wonder and awe one feels when swept up in a Pixar story. In a way, it's refreshing because it is indeed abnormal for Pixar to make a movie as incongrous as Brave, but that doesn't make Brave a better movie, it just makes it an interesting footnote in the studio's filmography.

Special Features: Commentary with Mark Andrews, Steve Purcell, Brian Larsen, and Nick Smith; Short films 13 minutes of extended scenes; 50 minutes of behind-the-scenes featurettes, diving into everything from an initial research trip to Scotland and an introduction to the core artists at Pixar; Marketing materials; Another handful of short, ~2min featurettes on art and characters.by peter hall