This animated family movie – set in the olden dayes of Scotland – gives us a worrying glimpse of the Disney/Pixar "ideas" fuel gauge, whose needle is twitching further and further leftward towards the "E". Brave is written and directed by Mark Andrews, one-time story supervisor on Ratatouille and The Incredibles, and Brenda Chapman, director of The Prince of Egypt. It looks as if their script has been reworked pretty often, though perhaps not quite often enough. It is eerily bland, with none of the zingingly funny lines and smart self-awareness we've come to expect from Pixar; yet it doesn't obviously appear to be pitched at very young kids, either, and doesn't quite have the necessary unforced simplicity. It feels like a standard issue super-sophisticated Pixar movie with the super-sophistication removed. Even the short film that precedes the feature – traditionally a tiny delicious treat in any Pixar programme – is treacly and dull. Brave has a certain inoffensive charm, sometimes, but it is often bafflingly uninteresting as a story.
The fantasy Highland setting is effectively extrapolated from the Scottish accent Mike Myers put on back in 2001 playing the curmudgeonly Shrek in the DreamWorks animation, occupying very much the same sort of landscape. It also resembles the robust Viking world of lovably grumpy clan chiefs and wimpy kids in another DreamWorks animation, How to Train Your Dragon. Kelly Macdonald voices Merida, the feisty, flame-haired Princess whose tomboyish interest in archery is indulged by her doting father, the King (Billy Connolly), but frowned upon by her strict mother, the Queen (Emma Thompson). Soon, the official Games are to commence, in which various dorky princelings are to compete, but Merida is infuriated to discover that the winner gets her hand in marriage, whether she likes it or not.
So Merida makes a defiant escape, and embarks on a fantasy adventure … with her mum. The wellbeing of her mum, who hasn't been an especially interesting character, and whose relationship with Merida has been significant only in representing what she is trying to escape, turns out to be pretty much all-important. There are magical transformations, and Merida encounters a perfunctory witch, voiced by Julie Walters, whose character is removed from the story in a lamely disconcerting way.
Now, in some respects, it is interesting and unusual not to have a conventional love interest, but what we are offered instead is something oddly regressive, binding Merida into the family unit just when she was making that bid for independent adulthood, and we don't learn anything very interesting about Merida or her mum. There was a time when Pixar movies worked gloriously for adults, teens, tweens, small kids, everyone; this one is unsatisfying for all ages.
• Brave is released in England and Wales on 13 August.
