The Incredibles
(2004)
review by Big McLargehuge

I am generally not one who is enamored with Disney products. However, when the teaser trailer for The Incredibles hit the web some nine months ago I was intrigued, to say the least, that Disney/Pixar would release a film so obviously not targeted at the 3-9 demographic, AND better yet, one that played to one of my favorite sub-genre’s of literature, the comic book.

Well, nine-months, and two full length trailers later, The Incredibles hits the screens of America and I for one say hooooraaay! The Incredibles is not just one of the best super hero film I’ve ever seen, it’s one of the best films I’ve ever seen.

Brad Bird created an entire universe of new heroes and villains that homage superheroes in both the DC and Marvel universes without parodying them. This allows The Incredibles to portray a world with which we are all familiar yet still manage to surprise us with its freshness.

We begin by meeting our two main characters in grainy color TV type stock doing a series of interviews. Mr. Incredible (Craig T. Nelson) is one among a pantheon of heroes patrolling the streets and skies of America in the 1950s. On the night of his wedding to Elastigirl (Holly Hunter) a series of small catastrophes not only make Mr. Incredible late for his own wedding, but also simultaneously put an end to super heroics in the United States. When he saves a suicidal man, who later sues on the grounds that he was injured during the rescue and didn’t want to be saved, unleashes a tidal wave of lawsuits that bring the entire superhero system down.

15 Years later Mr. Incredible, known now as Bob Parr, is a mild mannered insurance clerk in the Hero Protection Program. He and Elastigirl have three children, the reclusive Violet (Sara Vowell) who can turn herself invisible and create force fields and the headstrong young Dashiel (Spencer Fox) who can run like The Flash and can’t understand why he can’t play middle school sports, finally there’s little Jack-jack, a 9-month old with no powers (yet).

Bob can’t let go of his superhero past though, and spends his “guys night out” listening to the police scanner with another hidden hero, Frozone (Samuel L. Jackson) and performing vigilante crime fighting and rescues.

When Bob loses his insurance job and is given the chance to don his uniform again to work for a mysterious woman named Mirage (Elizabeth Pena) he hides his new super duties from his wife and kids. He learns too late that his new employer, Syndrome, is a power-mad inventor bent not on world domination, but on becoming the most popular non-super-super hero in the world, and to do that he needs to kill Mr. Incredible.

With the stage set it’s up to Elasigirl and the kids to rescue Dad and put things right.

I won’t spill anymore of the plot, because I don’t want to spoil even a single frame of this film for you.

What Disney/Pixar have done with The Incredibles is create a film that captures all the heroics, pathos, and drama of golden age comics and bring them to life via computer animation. And the animation… My God… It’s the best CGI I’ve ever seen. The design work by Lou Romano captures the idealized post-modernism of the early 1960s with crystal clarity. The houses, the furniture, the cars, the phones, and computer could have come from any number of whiz-bang center spreads from Popular Science of the era. The Incredibles is truly a feast for the eyes. And like anything animated by Pixar the movement, expressions, and backgrounds are incredibly detailed and beautiful.

The Incredibles invokes the visual design of comics, of course, and a healthy dose of 60’s spy film goodness. Syndrome’s volcanic island headquarters looks like it was lifted out of a Matt Helm flick and updated with more modern computers and doo-dads. It’s an amazing location from the dense jungles to the super-futuristic interior. In fact, all of the principle locations, Parr’s house, the Insurance Company, and Syndrome’s lair are characters themselves.

But looking beyond the eye candy there is a really deep little film here that deals not only with the overall adventure story I described above, but with the very nature of individuality itself. At one point Dash asks his mom why he can’t run for the school track team and she explains, again, why they have to keep the super powers secret. Dash counters with “Dad says we have these powers because we’re special.” Mom answers with “Everybody is special.” Dash then answers, “That’s another way of saying no one is special.”

It sounds corny on paper but it makes a lot of sense in the world of super heroics. With a society that litigated itself into complete bland homogeneity that values mediocrity above all else, although the message we are taught since childhood is completely contrary to that society. It’s an interesting dichotomy, especially for what is essentially a kids film. The film explores it further too, by making Elastigirl the reluctant hero who, like her husband, still long for the glory days, but places the safety and happiness of her kids above her and Bob’s needs. It’s a metaphor too for the era in which it’s set, the early 60s, were the apex of American conformism. The rigidity of such a society eventually led to the hippy backlash and the complete breakdown of the authority structure so rigidly established a decade earlier. It’s impossible for Bob NOT to bristle at the rigidity of his situation so defiant of his natural instincts to help others. This is expertly visualized with his position at the insurance company. Not only is he a cube rat, he only has HALF a cube, the rest occupied by an enormous concrete pillar.

The Incredibles works on many, many levels.

Bob/Mr. Incredible’s return to stealth heroics is also a metaphor for adultery. When Elastigirl learns what he’s been up to, she breaks down not because he’s in danger of being killed, but because she’s in danger of losing him to his love for superheroics.