If you had a chance to change your fate, would you?
-Princess Merida

It's a good film, just not a good PIXAR film. It will never be heralded as one of their groundbreaking films, and it won't be regarded as good as most of their other films. In fact this is awfully close to the Disney brand of Princess movies unfortunately.

It's saving grace is the character of Merida (voiced by Kelly Macdonald) who is extremely charming and fun to watch with her wild uncontrollable red hair. While she is a princess, she's unlike any other princess Disney has seen before.

There's several other memorable characters too, most notably King Fergus voiced by Billy Connolly who I always enjoy, but none of them are as fleshed out as what we're used to in PIXAR films.

The fact that this isn't a love story makes it different from the films I'm comparing it too, but it's still not different enough. The overall message of the film is a good one, but not a very deep one. It still feels like a standard Disney movie, just slightly better.