One look at the top suitors offered up by the three other leading clans and you can see what she means they’re the three stooges of Scotland, whose beefy kinsmen would sooner brawl than shake your hand. As for marriage, nothing could be less appealing: “I don’t want my life to be over,” she rails to her mother. Under the strict tutelage of loving but demanding mother Elinor ( Emma Thomson), Merida has learned the necessities but is a wild lass at heart, desperate for her days off when she can ride off on horseback and perfect her archery.

After a beautiful and eventful prologue in which flaming-maned Scottish princess Merida ( Kelly Macdonald) receives an archery bow for her birthday, glimpses blue will-o’-the-wisps floating through the forest and sees her father, King Fergus ( Billy Connolly), lose a leg to a ferocious bear, the action jumps ahead to her adolescence and her obligation to get married. Part of the problem is that Brave never becomes the film that seems to be promised at the outset. PHOTOS: 28 of Summer’s Most Anticipated Movies: ‘Avengers,’ ‘Dark Knight,’ ‘Prometheus’

Brave movie mother