America raves over home of the Brave

The studio's 13th movie is the first to feature a female protagonist and surely the last to include references to a scaffy witch, a gammy spell and a dancing tattie-bogle.

From the opening titles in Celtic script, Brave is a paean to a mythic Scotland, ruled by the clans McIntosh and McGuffin, with streams full of leaping salmon and Will-o'-the-wisps lighting the forests.

"It looks like a beautiful place, like something you can't miss," said Tessa Villanueva, one of the movie-goers who enjoyed the film in New York on its opening night on Friday.

"It makes me want to see the real thing,'' she told the Sunday Herald. ''The animation is almost real – I felt like I was looking at a photograph.

"I'm a big fan of Pixar films, but I was especially interested because of the Scottish background.

"It was a little bit stereotypical. When you think of Scotland, you think of men in kilts. You think of drinking. It's a fun way of looking at it – close to the real thing, but not the real thing."

Her friend, Martin Gana, was visiting from the Philippines. "It's great they used music that is inspired by Scotland itself but I would have liked to see a bit more of the culture," he said.

Pixar's impossibly agile camera swoops over a glen, rendered faithfully to the last sprig of heather, alighting at a medieval castle perched high above a loch. The hair of heroine Princess Merida is a riot of computer-generated ginger as she gallops through the woods on her trusty Clydesdale, Angus. There are bagpipes, standing stones and plenty of blue face-paint.

"We were curious to see this movie, so here we are at the opening night," said Marilyn Belek, who was visiting New York from California with her husband, Craig. "What's spectacular about it is that, unlike most Disney princesses who are sitting there waiting for some man to save them, Merida is going to save herself. She knows who she is, she knows what she wants. I love how confident she is.

"Scotland is shown as something that everyone would want to see," she added, no doubt to the delight of VisitScotland, which believes Brave has huge potential to boost the tourism industry. "I have a sneaking suspicion that people will want to visit after seeing this movie,'' said Belek. ''It looks raw – as if you can go out into the country and see this beautiful, incredible place."

The charm may be helped by the fact that it only rains for about a minute, half way through the film.

As Queen Elinor, Emma Thompson's Scottish accent sometimes drifts out of focus, but it was more than good enough to satisfy most American fans. "I thought the accents were good," said Noreen Gorry, from Brooklyn. "My husband's from Ireland and I hate when people put on a fake Irish accent."

John Alberti had come as a Pixar fan, but left with a desire to see Scotland. "Medieval Scotland, I guess," he said, "but it looks beautiful. I'll go there eventually." His companion, Anastasia Czyz, wished the clansmen had been a little more fleshed out, the 3D visuals notwithstanding. "I don't believe in stereotypes, so I didn't let the film make me think that Scottish men are all rough-and-tumble," she said.

American critics have mostly been kind to the film, although some suggested the script falls short of Pixar's high standards. Manohla Dargis, of the New York Times, called the animation "transfixing with the photorealist details – every blade of grass and each hair in Angus's mane looks perfectly individuated".

Another newspaper critic, Roger Moore, called it "a spirited Scottish-accented romp that packs female empowerment into a generally amusing tale of youthful impulsiveness and its consequences".

Brave opens in Scotland on August 3, although it is the closing film in the Edinburgh International Film Festival on June 30.