Merida - Legend of the Highlands - DVD

Film: The name Pixar undoubtedly stands for quality when it comes to animated films. With successes such as Toy Story, Finding Nemo, Ratatouille, Wall-E or Above, the creators of the animated film forge have not only succeeded time and again in charming millions of young and old moviegoers. Pixar works, regardless of whether they are short or feature-length films, also regularly win prizes at countless awards ceremonies. Now the studio is delivering its latest prank: the fairy tale Merida - Legend of the Highlands. And while it's fair to say that the influence of Pixar partner Disney is most noticeable here so far, the studio once again more than lives up to its reputation.

The film tells the story of Merida (voiced by Nora Tschirner), daughter of the Scottish king, who loves her freedom and is only too happy to always assert her stubbornness. But Merida's mother, Queen Elinor, has very different plans for her daughter's future: she is to marry one of the clan sons from the kingdom as soon as possible and thus secure the succession to the throne. And so the three clan lords and their sons are invited to the king's court to compete in an archery tournament for Merida's hand in marriage. But when Merida herself enters the competition with a ruse and wins over her potential husbands, this causes mighty trouble not only among the lords. Elinor is also fuming. After a heated argument, Merida flees the castle to let her anger cool down a bit in the forest. But when she sees some magical will-o'-the-wisps there that lead her to an enchanted place, the story takes an unexpected and dangerous turn...

The team of directors Mark Andrews, Steve Purcell and Brenda Chapman have done another first-class job visually with Merida - Legend of the Highlands. Whether the wonderful landscape of the Scottish Highlands, the blue will-o'-the-wisps or small details in the design of the characters, all this testifies to very great animation art. With a lot of attention to detail, an enchanting world was created, in which viewers of all ages can lose themselves only too gladly. Unfortunately, the story doesn't quite manage to live up to the high visual level. Although the story at the end is a bit more profound than the trailer initially suggests, compared to other Pixar films Merida - Legend of the Highlands unfortunately only offers good mediocrity in this aspect. However, this is still better than many other rather lovelessly cobbled together animated films.

With elements of fairy tale, comedy, adventure and fantasy, a beautiful mother-daughter story is told that touches without getting too cheesy and offers many extremely good laughs without drifting too much into infantile silliness. The most surprising aspect of the film, however, might be that despite the clear Disney influence, the obligatory knight in shining armor is completely dispensed with. It's not about a rebellious princess finding her true love. Rather, it's about an overprotective mother and her daughter struggling for self-determination. And that's a rather unusual theme for an animated film after all. The only real problem that this brings with it is that boys will probably relate to the story much less than girls. Admittedly, there is enough adventure and comedy that boys are likely to be amused by as well. But all in all Merida - Legend of the Highlands is probably more a movie for girls and their mothers.

For me as a big Pixar fan Merida - Legend of the Highlands is clearly ahead of Cars or The Big Crawl, but also clearly behind Wall-E or Above. But even if the creators didn't hit the big time here, it's still way ahead in terms of visuals, character drawing and story structure. It's an enchanting fairy tale that, accompanied by Patrick Doyle's atmospheric music, invites you to laugh and dream. And that is exactly why Merida's adventures are for young and older animation film fans: absolutely recommendable!

Picture + Sound: The technical quality of the DVD is exactly on the high level that can be expected from a Pixar film. The picture delights with its rich coloration, tremendous detail, very high overall sharpness, and excellently matched black levels, which ensure that there is little visible loss of quality to the action, even in the darker scenes. The Dolby Digital 5.1 mix does a good job of showcasing not only the voices, but also the numerous smaller and larger sound effects, and pleases with plenty of dynamics in the surround. Better this goes only on the Blu-Ray!

Extras: Absolutely worth seeing is the quite wonderful Oscar-nominated Pixar short film La Luna, next to which the second short film The Legend of Mor`du, in which the story of the bear from the film is told in more detail, can neither technically, nor contentwise keep up. But this second short film is also a nice addition. The DVD also has an interesting audio commentary with director Mark Andrews, co-director Steve Purcell, story supervisor Brian Larson and editor Nick Smith. While the commentary is quite factual and somewhat dry, it is Andrews' enthusiasm for the project that proves quite infectious, making the commentary not only informative but also quite entertaining in the end.

More supplemental material about the making of the film, such as a short documentary about a research trip the filmmakers took to Scotland, is only included on the Blu-ray. So if you want to see extensive bonus material in addition to the main film, you should definitely go for the 2D or 3D Blu-ray variant.

Conclusion: Merida - Legend of the Highlands is not necessarily the best film from the animation forge Pixar, but once again confirms the extremely high level of Pixar films on both a visual and dramaturgical level. An exciting, amusing and moving fairy tale, whose visual richness is very well shown on the DVD. Even if the bonus material is a bit meager compared to the Blu-Ray, this film belongs in every good animated film collection. Absolutely recommendable

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp