I took the kids to see Brave. It was Elizabeth’s first movie experience and she was enchanted.
There’s something magical about going to the movie theater and I’m so glad my kids share my love of film. I cuddled Elizabeth on my lap while Merida roamed the Scottish countryside. We shared gummy bears, our hands so sticky, we couldn’t clean them with just a napkin. Joseph sat next to us, whispering in the dark about how cool it all was while Elizabeth hushed him and told him, loudly, there’s no talking in the theater.
I thoroughly enjoyed Brave. It was charming and fun and so refreshing to see a Princess who wasn’t wishing for a Prince to come save her and fall in love with her. I enjoyed the relationship between mother and daughter. I’ve been wracking my brain since seeing it, trying to figure out if there is another Disney movie about a mother and daughter. There have been plenty about father and daughters: Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid, Pocahontas. There have been a few father and sons: Finding Nemo, Pinocchio, The Lion King. And of course, there’s always the stepmother/daughter relationship, of the evil variety: Cinderella, Snow White. Even in Tangled, while the Princess was beloved of her mother, the story was about her escaping her evil kidnapper posing as her mother.
Brave, though, is the sort of story I recognize from my own stint as a teenage daughter and one I’m sure will play out in my own home in the years to come: stubborn, headstrong daughter trying to establish her independence while her mother is trying to mold her into another version of herself and, in the end, discover understanding and acceptance of their differences.
I hope my own mother/daughter journey goes so well.
Well, without all that turning into a bear stuff.
Have you seen Brave? What did you think of it?
