Microchip lasers are very efficient, compact and convenient sources of coherent light. However they have a serious disadvantage that, especially in high power operation regimes, the emitted beam structure is relatively bad (with large angular divergence). We show that the intracavity photonic crystals with spatial filtering functionality, can strongly improve the spatial characteristics of the microchip laser. The angular divergence of the emitted beam is strongly reduced, and the radiation brightness is significantly increased due to the intracavity photonic crystal filter.