Friday Flix: The Decoy Bride

And we’re back with another edition of Friday Flix. I considered doing this post on Valentine’s Day, but comics demanded they had their place and since it was Thursday at that time anyway, well… Here we are.

Today we’re featuring, The Decoy Bride, starring Kelly Macdonald, Alice Eve, and of course David Tennant. Yeah, I think a lot of us would watch a movie just because David Tennant was in it. So, I did.

The description from IMDB.com:

When the world’s media descend on the remote Scottish island where a Hollywood actress is attempting to get married, a local girl is hired as a decoy bride to put the paparazzi off the scent.

THE GOOD

That should be obvious, shouldn’t it? David Tennant. And he uses his Doctor Who accent. And he does a fantastic job with his character. Plus I loved a certain scene where he ends up “playing” the bagpipes. It might be worth it just for that.

Our heroine, Katie (Kelly Macdonald), is also quite hilarious as awkward small-town girl. You might recognize her voice from Brave. Anyway, it seems they wrote most of the script for her—at least in that she has some great awkward girl moments that will make you both squirm and laugh.

Friday Flix: Brave

This week we’re going over to Pixarville with Brave. Typically I’m a big fan of Pixar movies. I love the Toy Stories, The Incredibles, and Monsters, Inc. to name a few. I think my least favorite Pixar film I’ve seen has got to be Cars. The plot bored me, so I didn’t get through the whole thing.

But don’t get me wrong, Brave was good, though certainly not the best Pixar has ever offered. Let’s see if we can figure out why. According to IMDB, Brave’s story is this: Determined to make her own path in life, Princess Merida defies a custom that brings chaos to her kingdom. Granted one wish, Merida must rely on her bravery and her archery skills to undo a beastly curse.

This movie has got all the right elements: action, adventure, tough girl, fun characters. At the end of the day, though, I just thought, Hm, that was good. But would I watch it again? Meh, probably not. Toy Story 1-3 though? Certainly! Especially for this part.

But back to Brave. I’ve been thinking a lot on why this movie, for me, was good but not great. Here’s what I’ve come up with. By now you should know I’m probably going to SPOIL the movie a little, so click away if you haven’t seen it.

STAKES

The big problem is Merida has to get her mom changed back from a bear into a person within a couple days or she’ll be a bear forever. But at no point did I ever doubt that she would change back. More importantly, I didn’t care. So she stays a bear or she doesn’t, who cares? No really, think about it. As far as we saw Mom was this unrelenting figure who only wanted things done her way and Merida seemed to only care for her as any daughter would be obligated to care for her mom. In fact, it seems more like Merida was worried more about how it would make her dad feel than that her mom had changed.

The other thing is whether or not Mom got changed back, Merida would still get exactly what she wanted. So where’s the risk? Yes, she’d lose her mother, and I guess that’s decent motivation. But as a viewer I just didn’t care enough about the mom for me to care.

The point is, in our stories, we can have the right plot formula, but fall short if any of the elements isn’t adequately balanced. It’s these details that take our stories from good to great.