The Incredibles. I mentioned it casually, almost in passing once before, a long time ago, but the DVD came out a few weeks ago and I just had to write a review of it. Originally it started out as a post for a Yahoo shopping page but it evolved into more when I realised I wanted to share my feelings about this movie and DVD here as well.
First of all let me start with the technical, and then possibly the only negative aspect. There are not enough superlatives to describe the animation in The Incredibles. It is, in a word, OUTSTANDING (note I resisted using the word incredible). The best way to assess this? You forget at times this is an animated movie. For someone who does not understand this as a triumphant technical achievement, you won’t notice – and that is a GOOD thing. For those with some grasp of what goes into this stuff: wet hair, underwater sequences, fire, ice, water, lava, smooth rapid motion, natural human movements – it is all here, almost as though director Brad Bird wanted to make the PIXAR artists prove they are the best in the business. When you watch the extras on the DVD, you get an appreciation of the work involved, and what they had to give up in order to meet deadlines; it gives you a real appreciation of the work involved in a project like this. The only real issue I have had with the movie relates to the sound. Now, this can be considered a general beef about many movies but it is very noticeable in The Incredibles – very often the action sequences are far, far out of proportion volume-wise with the dialogue. In the movie theatre it is not that big an issue because they have the volume cranked so loud no one notices – but at home, you might find yourself tampering with your volume control trying to balance between hearing every word of every character’s dialogue in this treasure and knocking over your neighbour’s house with a wall of sound during action scenes. Most likely this is only an issue if you have a home theatre surround sound system, so if you are just watching it on a regular TV you likely would not notice. On the other hand, the surround is excellent and great fun and if you can just crank it up and let it run, by all means do so. You may go deaf when the Omnidroid attacks, but if you have to go deaf this is the way to go.
The Incredibles is not only visually stunning. It is one of those exceedingly rare films which is both parody and serious. It pokes fun at the entire Spy/Superhero genre of comics and film and does it subtly in some ways and blatantly in others. Periodically it even pokes fun at itself, and it takes a brave creator to make fun of your own project in your own project. If you enjoy James Bond or “Comic-Book” hero movies, you will see frequent tributes and winks to scenes from those classics (and even not so classics). If you have ever been a comic book aficionado you likely will find yourself delighted with the story aspects borrowed from many classics – Fantastic Four, Moore’s Watchmen, Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns and a myriad of other storylines. The savvy comic-book reader from the 60s through the 80s will spot dozens of references that add to the fun of the movie without taking away from its flow. There is almost no way one person could get every joke and reference – everything PIXAR did in the Toy Story movies, Monster’s Inc., A Bug’s Life and Finding Nemo is done tenfold here. I watch The Incredibles again and again just to look for references I have missed. I can tell you after literally dozens of viewing I STILL want to see it again and again to see if I missed anything. Some of the briefest things are the most hilarious.
However, you do NOT have to be a comic-superhero-geek or Bond nut to appreciate this movie. The plot encompasses numerous topics: mid-life crisis, juggling family and career, changing careers, reliving ones youth, traditional roles of family members, and many other things all revolving around the central theme: the mundane meets the exceptional. The humour is not all based on in-jokes – those tend to be very subtle and geared toward that audience. There are tremendously amusing scenes relating to family life, being a kid, school and other “mundane” life aspects as well as humour relating to what it would be like to have superpowers and sometimes screw up or want to make less-than-heroic use of those powers. To me one of the lines which best sums all this up in the movie is this: “Is this RUBBLE?” Those who have seen the movie will understand. Those who haven’t yet watched, watch for it and you will hopefully understand why I think this is a great illustration of the central theme. The movie could be considered to have a level of social commentary, where Bird confronts head-on the topic of how North American culture has fallen into celebrating the mediocre and the fact that more and more we seem to be living by the credo “If at first you don’t succeed, lower your standards and try again.”
The casting and voice work are well done. I personally did not find myself thinking of the voice actors when I heard their work; I was absorbed by their characters on screen. In some animated films (for example, Nemo or Monsters, Inc.) I found myself unable to NOT think of the actor – Ellen or Billy Crystal in those cases – when I heard their voices. The voices in The Incredibles suit the characters well, and Holly Hunter strikes just the right tone in both being a Mom, as well as in the opening sequence when she plays a liberated female superhero named Elastigirl who laughs off the thought of retiring to start a family. Brad Bird does a brilliant job as Edna Mode, which seems incredibly unlikely on paper but the results are hilarious on screen.
On the kid’s side, well, there are concerns for those who may be uptight about violence or death in a movie. I have a 4-year-old who adores this movie and does not find it in any way disturbing. Frankly, I was relieved to see a movie that does not insult a child’s intelligence - The Incredibles neither glossed over nor dwelled on death – it is simply a fact of life in this movie. Some of the characters die – even one of the main characters. My daughter was not disturbed or upset by this. It is only because I am fully aware that the people who best knows a kid’s sensitivities are that kid’s parents that I am mentioning this. There is no blood or gore, just explosions and violence and one scene of a dead Superhero’s skeleton. Other than that aspect (and it is only a concern for people who may not let their kids watch TV) kids love the show too. They will get the more basic humour while largely ignoring the stuff adults “get”. The first half hour of the movie might move slowly for the littlest ones, but when the action picks up they are riveted to the screen. I think the best demonstration of how a kid relates to this movie is to explain the evolution of my daughter’s viewpoint: originally, when asked what the best part of the movie was, she said, “The super-fast little boy.” We have since had an addition to our family, a baby boy, and now my daughter’s favourite character is Violet, the “invisible” teenage daughter, because now her baby brother will be Dash when he grows up. It seems that kids relate to child superheroes with some dependence on their situation. Other than X-Men 2, there have not been many movies which have portrayed children with super powers so this aspect alone makes The Incredibles attractive to the kiddoes. Now my daughter insists that we must have another baby boy so that we will BE The Incredibles – the new baby would be Jack-Jack.
The DVD extras are great fun. There are no staged “bloopers”, but there are some animation errors in a “Blunder Reel”. Jack-Jack Attack is great fun and really ties up some questions you are left with after viewing the movie – just wait until AFTER you have seen the feature before watching it. You can, however, watch the adorable although sometimes corny “Boundin’” and learn all about its director Bud Luckey (voice of Agent Rick Dicker in the movie), one of the first PIXAR employees. The deleted scenes are a treasure in animated storyboards. Possibly one of the most amusing portions, though, is in the Top Secret section where you will find Mr. Incredible and Pals, a cartoon reminiscent of the old and horribly lame animation in Superhero TV Shows of the past. It is not Mr. Incredible and Pals that is the real fun, though, it is the commentary by Mr. Incredible and Frozone when they are apparently shown the finished product for the first time years later.
All in all, this may be the best DVD I have ever purchased. It is well worth the investment. With the current Disney/PIXAR schism it may be the only true Incredibles production ever to be released. I am not sure how Disney may deal with PIXAR distribution in the future but if you are at all interested in The Incredibles, go out and grab it today to be sure you get the edition you want. Even if you don’t have kids yet, someday you will want to show this to your future descendants.
