The Incredibles
Mood:  party time!
Now Playing: The Incredibles
The Incredibles
By Daniel G. Jennings
There is only one word to use to describe Pixair's latest movie and that is fun. The Incredibles is pure fun from beginning to end.
I haven't enjoyed a movie this much in a long time. Watching the Incredibles I felt like a ten year old boy seeing his first Star Wars or James Bond movie or reading Marvel Comics at the Seven Eleven. The Incredibles is that much fun and more. It's better than Toy Story and maybe the best animated film made in America.
The Incredibles is the first truly successful super hero film. It works because it captures the power and excitement and wonder of the classic comic books of the 1960s and 1970s. Then like the best comic books sets a profoundly human story against the backdrop of a bizarre alternate universe where superheroes and super villains are an everyday reality. Like the best comic books the Incredibles creators throw in generous helpings of high camp and satire to make a delightful and extremely funny movie. There are plenty of inside jokes that comic fans will recognize but the movie would be just as entertaining to a person who has never read a comic book.
The Incredibles tells the story of Mr. Incredible and Elasti Girl, two 1960s style superheroes who are forced to come down to Earth and live a mundane life. The two meet and marry and are then forced to abandon superheroics by lawsuits. Sleazy lawyers sue them out of existence (I bet John Edwards won't like this movie much) because some of the people they rescue are hurt in the process. In one funny sequence Mr. Incredible is sued by a suicidal man whom he rescued after leaping from a building.
The government grateful for the supers' services protects them with secret identities and the witness relocation program. Unfortunately everyday life is hell for a super hero. Mr. Incredible now Bob Parr works in a cubicle at a heartless insurance company where he gets in trouble with the boss by telling the customers how to get their claims paid. Elasti Girl is a haggled housewife who has to put up with two super powered kids.
Parr gets lured back in the super hero life he loves by the machinations of Tantrum, a crazed ex super hero fan now a Dr. No style super villain. Tantrum is systematically exterminating super heroes in his efforts to develop super weapons and make himself into a super hero. In his quest to stop Tantrum, Incredible finds himself trapped on an island out of a James Bond movie and his family has to save him.
This plotline works because this is a visually stunning movie. The animated action, particularly images of a plane crash, is thrilling and exciting and looks better than a lot of stunt work involving live actors and actresses. The action and the super heroes themselves capture the power and thrill produced by the great comic book artists of my youth. For once superheroes on the big screen look as good as they do in the comics maybe better. These aren't actors dressed up in silly costumes they're really superheroes.
The scenes of Tantrum's high tech base remind me of the James Bond movies of the 1960s and 70s. The elaborate yet elegant structure and its denizens look incredible. The giant robot Tantrum unleashes is truly frightening.
There's a terrific retro feel here that captures the spirit of the movies of the 1960s perfectly. The music, the look, and the spirit of those movies of elegant and sophisticated fun.
The movie works though because it not the least bit pretentious like most comic book movies. It's not grim and filled with social commentary like the X-Men or just grim and silly like Batman. Instead it's light hearted and fun but not too light hearted. The action sequences are gripping and taken seriously and yes people do die. Pixair's super heroes avoid falling into the trap of most superhero stories the heroes aren't a pantheon of perfect god like beings, grim loners on a quest for vengeance or campy stereotypes. They're treated like real people, with families and limitations.
The Incredibles was a great movie, the audience I saw it with stayed and sat through the credits expecting one more incredible surprise. There is one disturbing thing about this movie, the animated characters here seemed more real than most real characters in today's movies.