215, Brave

Parents, you know you cant go far wrong with the latest Disney Pixar offering.  Time after time they have set the benchmark for great kids animation while managing to keep the adults interest for the full 90 minutes.  While the kids are awe inspired by the cute and lovable characters on screen we get treated to the occasional witty banter that sometimes goes over our off springs head but is the nod from the studio that they want to make us interested as well and give us a reason go going other than just trying to entertain the kids during the holidays.

Well, once more they've gone the extra mile and Brave is a worthy string to their already impressive bow.  Don't forget - this studio is only really 17 years old as its first big movie Toy Story was released in 1995 although its original inception was in 1979 as the graphics arm of lucasfilm and it was Apple legend Steve Jobs who took it on as a separate entity and personally funded its early transformation in 1986. 

Its had an impressive 13 movie haul to date with a resume that includes Toy Story in 1995, followed by A Bug's Life (1998), Toy Story 2 (1999), Monsters, Inc. (2001), Finding Nemo (2003) and The Incredibles (2004).  Disney bought it in 2006 (becoming Disney Pixar) for about $7 Billion and since then it just went from strength to strength with Cars (2006), Ratatouille (2007), WALL-E (2008), Up (2009), Toy Story 3 (2010), Cars 2 (2011), and now, Brave (2012) and there are more to come!

You cant fault these movies - their secret being the  PhotoRealistic RenderMan, its own implementation of the industry-standard RenderMan image-rendering application programming interface used to generate high-quality images.  Geeky enough for you?  Well best get onto the movie itself.

Another impressive cast list this time include Billy Connolly,  Kelly MacDonald, Emma Thompson, Julie Walters, Robbie Coltrane and Kevin McKidd to name a few - Scottish Hollywood royalty represented (in part) to full effect.

Kelly plays Merida, a flame haired princess who is determined to lead her own life rather than the one of regal pomp bestowed upon her.  With the support of her boisterous father (Connolly) and to the dismay of her well to do mother (Thompson) she seeks out a wish from Witch (Walters) to change her fate - but in true Disney tradition, her plans of grandeur go to pot when whats best for her, may not be so enthralling for those close to her and its down to Merida to fix the bond between Mother & Daughter to break the curse and return to happy, normal life.

Its quirky, funny, adventurous and brilliantly animated.  The cast excel in their roles and with a total adoration of Trainspotting I'm always glad to see Macdonald and McKidd in the limelight.  I even saw Billy on his farewell tour so I feel closer to this cast than many with an obvious awareness of Brit legends Thompson and Walters, it would be hard to have a bad word against this one.

Compared to the other kids movies out there currently (and believe me, there are a fair few) this one ticks the most boxes.