The Incredibles has humor, thrills, and adventure, but most of all it has heart.
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Anyone old enough or interested enough may remember that George Reeves, star of the television series "Superman" from 1952-1957, was beginning to look more than a little thick around the middle by the time the show ended. I couldn't help thinking of Reeves as I watched "The Incredibles."
Although I found Pixar/Disney's previous CGI-animated film, "Finding Nemo," beautiful to look at but somewhat lacking in story and characters, their 2004 release "The Incredibles" more than makes up for it, winning the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film of the Year. It doesn't have the spectacular visual beauty of "Nemo," but it's far more engaging, at least for an adult and I would imagine for children, to watch.
I like the movie's basic premises: that superheroes can sometimes cause more harm than good; that the collateral damage they can cause and the resultant lawsuits can mount up; and that outlawing superheroes entirely is a logical solution. So, the government decides to round them all up and put them in a kind of witness protection program, where they're given new lives as ordinary citizens. Which comes as a relief to most of them. I mean, having to save the world all day can get on anybody's nerves, even supers'.
The time setting is never announced, it's presumably the present, but it appears also from the automobiles, architecture, clothing, and home furnishings to be somewhere in the 1960s. That was a perfect time for superheroes, after all, with superhero comics flourishing and "Batman" on TV. It's at this time that Mr. Incredible, his wife Elastigirl, and their three children take up residence as the Parr family in a quiet suburban community just outside a great metropolitan city. Ordinary people living ordinary lives. How boring for Mr. Incredible, who longs for the old days.
Bob Parr ("Mr. Incredible"), now a mild-manner insurance adjuster, is voiced in a deep, husky, properly heroic manner by Craig T. Nelson. Helen Parr ("Elastigirl"), now an average housewife, is voiced in comforting, motherly tones by Holly Hunter. Teenaged Violet Parr is voiced by Sarah Vowell; young Dashiell "Dash" Parr by Spencer Fox; and baby Jack-Jack by Eli Fucile and Maeve Andrews. The father's super power is his strength; the mother's her ability to stretch and expand her body; the girl's to disappear and create force fields; the boy's to run at lightning speed; and the baby's.... Well, hey, it's a baby, you know?
Interestingly, this is the first Pixar animated cartoon to deal exclusively with human beings, albeit mostly super ones. Perhaps this is another reason it seems so attractive to audiences of all ages. It's still a cartoon, which means it has that youth appeal; but it's an exciting adventure, too, with all the elements of a superspy epic, gearing it toward teens and adults as well. And, certainly, there's the amazing computer-generated animation that we've all become so used to by now but still fascinates us with its intricate detail and amazing 3-D composition.
For me, some of the secondary characters are as funny and persuasive as the main ones. As Bob's best friend, Lucius "Frozone" Best, Samuel L. Jackson lends eloquence to the proceedings with his recognizably expressive voice. As the villain, Syndrome, Jason Lee is as vile and annoying a baddie as one could want; as his assistant, Mirage, Elizabeth Pena is as appropriatey creepy a right-hand woman as there can be. Then, there are Mr. Huph (Wallace Shawn), Parr's bossy little boss; Bernie Kropp (Lou Romano), Dash's harried elementary school teacher; Kari (Bret Parker), an airheaded baby-sitter; Rick Dicker (Bud Luckey), an even-toned government agent; Bomb Voyage (Dominique Louis), a clunky bank robber; and, most especially, Edna Mode (Brad Bird, the director), a fashion mogul patterned after famed Hollywood costume designer Edith Head. Edna creates new superhero outfits for the Parr family when they take up as The Incredibles. "My god, you've gotten fat," she tells Bob. And "No capes."
Yes, Mr. and Mrs. Parr take up crusading again. Bob in particular can't resist jumping back into action when the world and his family are threatened. Of course, Bob has put on a little weight, as Edna points out, and thus you have the George Reeves connection I alluded to earlier. But weight or no weight, somebody's terminating all the world's ex-superheroes, and Bob can't stand around and do nothing about it.
"The Incredibles" has humor, thrills, and adventure, but most of all it has heart. Part "Superman" and part "James Bond" (complete with a Bond-like musical soundtrack), the movie zips along at a crackling pace, using characters that are sympathetic and human, even the heavies. I admit the film goes on for too long at nearly two hours, with the second half coming straight from "Dr. No" and "Moonraker" (one of the first doors Mr. Incredible encounters when he infiltrates the villain's headquarters is numbered "07"), and it shows signs of sagging in the middle. But its fascinating theme and continuous surprises keep things jumping in no time.
It's a pretty sophisticated movie, actually, which should come as no surprise when one considers it was written and directed by the same guy, Brad Bird, who also wrote and directed "The Iron Giant" and episodes of "The Simpsons." Something so simple as the look on a little kid's face when he sees his neighbor, Mr. Parr, lift a car over his head is priceless and enough to convince anyone that this is no ordinary animated cartoon.
Video:
The audiovisual qualities of the film are hard to fault. The image is presented in a widescreen scope measuring a ratio approximately 2.17:1 across my standard-screen Sony HD television. It is anamorphic, enhanced for 16x9 TVs, transferred at a relatively high bit rate, and THX optimized. The movie looks at least as good as I remember it from a motion-picture theater.
The animation itself may not always be as striking as that in Pixar's previous production, "Finding Nemo," but it is rendered just as sharply, just as clearly and distinctly; and, what's more, there is a very low level of grain, as the movie was converted directly from the digital domain. A few scenes do look a touch more washed out than others, some shots inside the Parr's house, for instance; but the filmmakers tell us on the audio commentary that they did this intentionally (although their reasons for doing so seemed pretty vague to me). In any case, overall, the video looks excellent.
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