The bizarre-sounding Newt, about the last two newts on Earth, was ditched in favour of a profit-boosting repertoire of safe bets (including sequels for Toy Story, Cars and Monsters, Inc). Since then, the roster has shed its eccentricity. Ratatouille, WALL-E and Up, with their unorthodox heroes (respectively a rodent chef, a lonely robot and an elderly airborne curmudgeon), were already in the works when Disney opened its chequebook.

Disney's $7.4bn buy-out of the studio in 2006 is significant, coinciding with an emphasis on merchandise-spawning, franchise-friendly titles over the innovation for which the junior company is renowned. Todd McCarthy in the Hollywood Reporter spoke of 'a sense of letdown', while Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times predicted that 'parents will be disappointed if they're hoping for another Pixar groundbreaker', and found the studio guilty of 'poaching on traditional territory of Disney, its corporate partner'. Alongside praise for Pixar's customary technical excellence, some critics have decided that Brave doesn't live up to its title. The catalyst for the backlash is Brave, the new adventure about a Scottish princess who refuses to concede to her clan's demands for her to marry. Minor bumps in the road, such as the slightly cynical Cars, could be overlooked, like the infrequent misbehaviour of an otherwise joyful child.īut the honeymoon between press and Pixar has given way to a trial separation. In the 17 years since the release of the computer animation studio's debut feature, Toy Story, quality control has been so high that critics have needed only to change names and plot-points in their reviews of each new film, leaving the superlatives untouched from the previous year's rave.

P ixar employees are currently acclimatising themselves to a largely alien response to their work: ambivalence.

The young and the brave movie