Reviews of The Incredibles (2004) and related work
- Spin-off: “Jack-Jack Attack” (2005)
The Incredibles (2004
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Public-interest law kills the era of the supers. Forced into hiding and into the soul-blackening insurance business, once-great Mister Incredible raises a family and keeps his dream alive. He doesn’t know that one by one, many of the old greats have been dying lately.
Superhero/superagent parody/action. Watchmen (1986) for kids. Pixar’s first PG rating. Unforgivable for spawning even more abuse of the adjective in modern US English. On a related note, the fascist interpretation of the American dream—as a deprecation of being average and accepting your limitations—is pretty close to the surface of this movie. Thus a normal bureaucratic job is shown only in the light of shallow satire, and the major characters seem not to reflect on having been born superhuman. Even when the slapstick physics seem to kill someone, nobody stops to think. The action sequences are often derivative, particularly the spinning blades, and some of the domestic humour is cliché. The facial designs are quite effective, often with excellent split-second changes of expression keeping the pace up. Some good characters, some flat.
References here: Megamind (2010), Despicable Me 2 (2013).
moving picture animation fiction