51) The Incredibles
Director: Brad Bird
Year: 2004
Plot Summary: Mr. Incredible and his wife Elastigirl are the world's greatest famous crime-fighting superheroes in Metroville. Always saving lives and battling evil on a daily basis. But fifteen years later, they have been forced to adopt civilian identities and retreat to the suburbs where they have no choice but to retire of being a superhero and force to live a "normal life" with their three children Violet, Dash and Jack-Jack. Itching to get back into action, Bob gets his chance when a mysterious communication summons him to a remote island for a top secret assignment. He soon discovers that it will take a super family effort to rescue the world from total destruction.
On this second watch, I have decided that The Incredibles may even be one of the best animated movies of all time.
Despite what the plot summary may suggest, to call The Incredibles a superhero movie, as though it was just another men-in-tights adventure of the '00s, would be crudely reductive. It's about family and how a middle-class suburban unit comes back together after having slowly drifted apart through boredom.
Set in what seems loosely like the 1960s, we have the Parr family: father Bob, mother Helen, teenage daughter Violet, preteen son Dashiell, and baby Jack-Jack. They are like a great many American families of that era when the Eisenhower years were mutating into the Space Age. Bob doesn't like his job, but bottles that up because he has to be a good provider, Helen loves her family and children but they're not as fulfilling as her life when she was young and single, and so on. But unlike most American families of that time, they're also all superheroes!
Their powers are a tribute to that of the Marvel universe, but they are also a clever extension of their personalities as members of the Parr household: Bob as the strong, infallible protector, Helen as the homemaker who has to be everywhere at once to keep things together , Violet as an easily-embarrassed teenager who just wants to disappear and Dash as a kid with way too much energy for his parents to keep up with.
How these characters develop and learn to accept both their family and themselves makes up the heart of the story. Particularly touching is the change Violet makes. At first she feels outcasted because of her powers; in one scene she hides, invisible, right in front of a teenage boy and later sighs "he looked at me". However, by the end of the movie she blossoms into a confident girl who is happy with who she is, beautifully symbolised by how she ties her hair out of her face.
It's also, as you'd expect from Pixar, amazingly well made. From the opening gag, a vintage interview that introduces our main characters, Bird's command of pacing and structure is fantastic, propelling us through the movie's 115 minute running time. Moreover, the dramatic elements and the action scenes are perfectly balanced, allowing the audience to care about the characters' fates during these big set pieces. Bird knows that the most important elements are story and characters, and he never lets either get lost in the astonishing visuals.
Speaking of astonishing visuals, the film's design is jaw-dropping, at once evoking both the over-the-top spy movies of the period and the physically-impossible look of the period's great pulp comic books. And let's not forget Michael Giacchino whose delightful score resembles like a lost James Bond theme written by John Barry, without ever once directly quoting Barry's work.
But the most brilliant feature of this film, and any film from this studio really, is just how clever and witty the whole screenplay is. There are superheroes getting sued for damages, little nods to other superhero stories such as the famous scene in Spider-Man 2 when he stops a train from running off the track and a funny yet touching moment when Dash enters a race and his family scream "Faster! Faster!" only to remember his powers and shout "Slow down a bit! Go for a close second!". But, of all of these little moments of genius, the most hilarious is the gag about superheroes capes as a fashion designer speaks of various caped crusaders who have had them caught on rockets, propellers and in tornados.
It's a perfect entertainment that never lets up and never treats its audience with any condescension, and never lets spectacle overwhelm its humanity. In fact, The Incredibles is full of compassion for human kind and is so packed with heart and soul that you can feel it becoming a classic as you are watching it. Altogether, a fantastically fun movie with brains and a heart. If that's not the very essence of Pixar, I don't know what is. Incredible!
5/5
2 comments:
This is the only Pixar to genuinely make me cry at such a random moment of tension (when Helen is on the plane with Dash and Violet and she's telling her to force field it but ends up getting destroyed). I don't know, I seem to have a history with this film that's even stronger than the first Toy Story.
That's certainly one of the darkest moments in any kids film, when the villain attempts to send Helen and Violet and Dash to their death, then in believing he's done so coldly says: "Oh well. You'll get over it."
But that is a poignant little scene with Violet which, to me, really sums up her timid, unsure nature.
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