the incredibles. review of the movie by alan haber. buhdge

film buhdge unspooling at a theater near you

"Watching movies at home is, in many ways, preferable to going to the movie theater. It's quiet (no chatty yaketty-yakkers), more comfortable, and the sound is likely to be better (especially if you've got a good sound system). But nothing can replace the big, theater screen experience..." - Alan Haber

The Incredibles (2004) Written and directed by Brad Bird Pixar (2004) Even without the sly tips of the hat to James Bond, Star Wars (particularly Return of the Jedi) , the DC Comics universe and actress Linda Hunt, this would be the best movie ever made, in the sense that it pushes all the buttons a middle-aged guy or gal would want to be pushed, for The Incredibles is a pop culture universe mirroring decades of worship of the things that turn us on, of the values we treasure, of the job to be done by an able-bodied (if a bit on the zoftig side) superhero and his family of super cohorts, and if that isn't the longest sentence, albeit one with some pretty solid information, you've read today, then I'm not Bob Parr, or his alter ego, Mr. Incredible. Of course, I loved The Incredibles. Had a smile this wide on my face the entire two hours. Yes, two hours. The move is rated PG, which is a far cry from the usual G rating that Pixar movies get, and for those of you with small children who gravitated to Toy Story and Toy Story 2 and A Bug's Life and Monsters Inc. because you knew they would be right up your kids' alley, you'd better think about taking your kids to some other movie, because this one, this incredible one, is not for them. Other reviewers have said this, and I must echo: This movie is not for small children. This movie's story is pretty involving--multi-leveled, even, and there's a whole ton of violent images, albeit of the cartoon variety; when Mr. Incredible puts a bad guy out of commission, said bad guy doesn't get up and walk away. This isn't Walker, Texas Ranger by any stretch, but it isn't A Bug's Life, either. The story, in a nutshell: Bob and Helen Parr (voiced with aplomb by Craig T. "Coach" Nelson and Holly Hunter, respectively) have hung up their capes (the subject of a good joke, by the way) to live out a suburban life with their kids, superheros having been deemed better off out of the picture by the government, which places the Parrs in its Superhero Relocation Program. Forced to work a boring 9-to-5 job processing insurance claims, Parr and his wife Helen, who was also a superhero called Elastigirl, go through the motions--Bob, pining for his glory days (his home office is a shrine to his superhero antics), and Helen, grateful that her husband is working that boring job to provide for his family. But Bob misses his days as Mr. Incredible--he even meets secretly (under the guise of going bowling) with fellow, retired superhero Frozone (voiced by the underused Samuel L. Jackson); they reminisce in a car parked in an alley where they listen to calls coming in on a police scanner. Bob just can't let his superhero habits go, gets sucked into a superhero job for a mysterious employer (all the while keeping this from his family), and...well, that would be telling, and I'm no snitch. That this movie is, uh, incredible looking, should come as no surprise; you would expect perfection from Pixar, and you get it here. The human faces (there are no cuddly talking animals this time around) are basically a progression from those seen in the Toy Story movies, meaning they look even better than what came before. The facial expressions are right on, the backgrounds are nearly photo realistic (particularly the trees and the water, oh, the water!, which Pixar figured out how to do so well in last year's Finding Nemo), and the voice characterizations are as good as it gets (Sarah Vowell is excellent as daughter Violet, Wallace Shawn is hilarious as Bob's pig-headed boss, and director Bird absolutely inhabits the Linda Hunt-ish superhero costume designer Edna Mode). Oh--let's not forget about the hair. The hair was purportedly particularly hard to render, but they got it right, and the animators got the Parrs' daughter's long, face-covering hair to look like actual hair, even if the process sucked every ounce of power out of Pixar's computers. The thing about this movie, above and beyond the visuals and the sound and the Pixar factor, all of which are stupendous, no other way to say it--the thing about this movie is, it is us, all of us, in the way that it promotes family values, that it puts family first, and love and harmony and all of that, which is just as it should be, and which makes this a typical Pixar movie after all. Bob Parr is a superhero, and the Superhero Relocation Program isn't going to change that, but he's also a superhero at home, and Helen Parr is a mother first and foremost, and she'd be a superhero for that alone, even if she'd never stretched herself to save a person or battle a supervillain. Of course, we're all trying to do that, aren't we? I guess that makes us all superheros (the difference is we don't have the cool costumes). At the screening I saw, there seemed to be more small children than adults, and I think some of the parents were a bit surprised--shocked, even--that they were getting The Incredibles instead of Finding Nemo. But some parents, particularly the man sitting in front of me with his kids, who were around five and six years old, were okay with that. I asked the man if his son understood what was going on; he said No, not really, he's too young, but he'd been explaining things to him while the movie was unspooling, for whatever that was worth. But the dad enjoyed the film, and so did the woman who was with her kids, who was sitting near the dad. Both of them loved the movie for the same reasons I did, and both had the same complaint: "Where are the out takes?" Veteran Pixar fans know to expect out takes at the end of the company's movies, but this is somehow a different experience than what has come before, and it doesn't feel right to have expected out takes this time around. This time around, Pixar has delivered a complete, moviegoing experience for older kids and, dare I say it, adults, and I imagine the Pixar folks finished screening a rough cut, and then the final cut, and thought, "No out takes. The movie is a perfect circle." It's probably more of a Mobius strip, but it's perfect, alright. Alan Haber November 7, 2004
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The Incredibles
(2004)
Written and directed by Brad Bird
Pixar (2004)

Even without the sly tips of the hat to James Bond, Star Wars (particularly Return of the Jedi) , the DC Comics universe and actress Linda Hunt, this would be the best movie ever made, in the sense that it pushes all the buttons a middle-aged guy or gal would want to be pushed, for The Incredibles is a pop culture universe mirroring decades of worship of the things that turn us on, of the values we treasure, of the job to be done by an able-bodied (if a bit on the zoftig side) superhero and his family of super cohorts, and if that isn't the longest sentence, albeit one with some pretty solid information, you've read today, then I'm not Bob Parr, or his alter ego, Mr. Incredible.

Of course, I loved The Incredibles. Had a smile this wide on my face the entire two hours. Yes, two hours. The move is rated PG, which is a far cry from the usual G rating that Pixar movies get, and for those of you with small children who gravitated to Toy Story and Toy Story 2 and A Bug's Life and Monsters Inc. because you knew they would be right up your kids' alley, you'd better think about taking your kids to some other movie, because this one, this incredible one, is not for them.

Other reviewers have said this, and I must echo: This movie is not for small children. This movie's story is pretty involving--multi-leveled, even, and there's a whole ton of violent images, albeit of the cartoon variety; when Mr. Incredible puts a bad guy out of commission, said bad guy doesn't get up and walk away. This isn't Walker, Texas Ranger by any stretch, but it isn't A Bug's Life, either.

The story, in a nutshell: Bob and Helen Parr (voiced with aplomb by Craig T. "Coach" Nelson and Holly Hunter, respectively) have hung up their capes (the subject of a good joke, by the way) to live out a suburban life with their kids, superheros having been deemed better off out of the picture by the government, which places the Parrs in its Superhero Relocation Program. Forced to work a boring 9-to-5 job processing insurance claims, Parr and his wife Helen, who was also a superhero called Elastigirl, go through the motions--Bob, pining for his glory days (his home office is a shrine to his superhero antics), and Helen, grateful that her husband is working that boring job to provide for his family.

But Bob misses his days as Mr. Incredible--he even meets secretly (under the guise of going bowling) with fellow, retired superhero Frozone (voiced by the underused Samuel L. Jackson); they reminisce in a car parked in an alley where they listen to calls coming in on a police scanner. Bob just can't let his superhero habits go, gets sucked into a superhero job for a mysterious employer (all the while keeping this from his family), and...well, that would be telling, and I'm no snitch.

That this movie is, uh, incredible looking, should come as no surprise; you would expect perfection from Pixar, and you get it here. The human faces (there are no cuddly talking animals this time around) are basically a progression from those seen in the Toy Story movies, meaning they look even better than what came before. The facial expressions are right on, the backgrounds are nearly photo realistic (particularly the trees and the water, oh, the water!, which Pixar figured out how to do so well in last year's Finding Nemo), and the voice characterizations are as good as it gets (Sarah Vowell is excellent as daughter Violet, Wallace Shawn is hilarious as Bob's pig-headed boss, and director Bird absolutely inhabits the Linda Hunt-ish superhero costume designer Edna Mode). Oh--let's not forget about the hair. The hair was purportedly particularly hard to render, but they got it right, and the animators got the Parrs' daughter's long, face-covering hair to look like actual hair, even if the process sucked every ounce of power out of Pixar's computers.

The thing about this movie, above and beyond the visuals and the sound and the Pixar factor, all of which are stupendous, no other way to say it--the thing about this movie is, it is us, all of us, in the way that it promotes family values, that it puts family first, and love and harmony and all of that, which is just as it should be, and which makes this a typical Pixar movie after all. Bob Parr is a superhero, and the Superhero Relocation Program isn't going to change that, but he's also a superhero at home, and Helen Parr is a mother first and foremost, and she'd be a superhero for that alone, even if she'd never stretched herself to save a person or battle a supervillain. Of course, we're all trying to do that, aren't we? I guess that makes us all superheros (the difference is we don't have the cool costumes).

At the screening I saw, there seemed to be more small children than adults, and I think some of the parents were a bit surprised--shocked, even--that they were getting The Incredibles instead of Finding Nemo. But some parents, particularly the man sitting in front of me with his kids, who were around five and six years old, were okay with that. I asked the man if his son understood what was going on; he said No, not really, he's too young, but he'd been explaining things to him while the movie was unspooling, for whatever that was worth. But the dad enjoyed the film, and so did the woman who was with her kids, who was sitting near the dad. Both of them loved the movie for the same reasons I did, and both had the same complaint: "Where are the out takes?" Veteran Pixar fans know to expect out takes at the end of the company's movies, but this is somehow a different experience than what has come before, and it doesn't feel right to have expected out takes this time around. This time around, Pixar has delivered a complete, moviegoing experience for older kids and, dare I say it, adults, and I imagine the Pixar folks finished screening a rough cut, and then the final cut, and thought, "No out takes. The movie is a perfect circle."

It's probably more of a Mobius strip, but it's perfect, alright.

Alan Haber
November 7, 2004