A very good score by Doyle, one of his best in awhile, enriched by a stirring Celtic melody that could easily have been milked to its last drop but, as has been remarked, has been embroidered into the fabric of the film with surprising care and restraint. The soundtrack bears some weaknesses that mark Doyle's blockbuster stylings (e.g., largely unimaginative action scoring, some of which could probably be interchanged with Howard's contemporaneous Snow White) while avoiding the bombast that at times gets the better of him. (The bagpipes work: they're either source music or defensibly representative of the on-screen tribalistic blustering.) The film is middling Pixar. It never (organically) builds or sustains the kind of delirious energy and momentum that their best work does. The narrative's central relationship is skillfully developed -- mother and daughter are archetypal but three-dimensional, perhaps to the detriment of the male cutouts that surround them -- but the careful craftsmanship is nearly undone by a completely unconvincing appeal to gratingly anachronistic social mores. In context the film is beautiful to look at (in contrast to what I expected from the trailer); Merida's wild, intemperate locks are thrillingly alive.