"The Incredibles," I would probably get kicked off The Student staff, so I'm just going to say that this was a very ambitious but sometimes flawed animation piece from the reliably great Pixar Studio. Not being a Nemo-philiac, I would rate this picture somewhere above the much-loved "Finding Nemo," but distinctly below the animated bliss of "Monsters Inc." A send-off of superhero pictures, a family drama and a James Bond-type thriller all wrapped into one, "The Incredibles" spans far beyond the scope of any previous computer-animated motion picture (besides the little watched "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within"). Despite a bulky running time of 115 minutes and a few heavy-handed family bonding moments, "The Incredibles" manages to have broad appeal and a mature style, along with plenty of visual brilliance and dynamite action.
"The Incredibles" follows the lives of superheroes Mr. Incredible and his wife Elastigirl as they make the switch from a life of saving the world to the everyday grind of suburban life. Superheroes have been banned by the government due to a rash of ugly lawsuits, started by a wrongful not-death suit after Mr. Incredible saved a man in mid-suicide. They were relocated and disguised so that they may lead normal lives away from the spotlight. Mr. Incredible and Elastigirl become Bob and Helen Parr, and struggle with the efforts of raising their super-power endowed children in a world of normal people. Bob works in an insurance agency, puts on weight and dreams of the days when he can fight crime again, while Helen attends school meetings to find out why her son Dash is in trouble again. These are dark days for the Parrs, as their attempts to hide their true nature results in tempers flaring, broken windows and, inevitably, explosions. After Helen tells her son that "everybody's special," Dash quickly responds, "which is just another way of saying nobody is."
The suburban doldrums are livened up for Bob Parr when he receives a secret message calling him to resume his Incredible identity and fight crime on a remote island. Soon the whole family is involved, as the kids earn their superhero chops and mom and dad shake off the rust and kick some ass. Along the way, they have a hilarious and all-too-short encounter with a diminutive Asian costume maker, a fight with a metal octopus straight out of Orson Welles' "War of the Worlds" RKO broadcast, and an encounter with the head of their fan club whom they jilted way back when. The inevitable happy ending does little to detract from the fun and suspense along the way.
The animation of the movie sports some stunning visuals, but the effects suffers on human close-ups, which end up looking a great deal like claymation. The plot is hardly groundbreaking, and shows streaks of everything from "Spy-Kids" to "Goldfinger." The real surprise of the movie lies in its maturity, which ranges from a jaw-dropping drinking joke inserted into the dialogue to the honest portrayal of teen angst on the part of the oldest Parr child. The movie addresses themes not touched in other computer-animated pictures, and humor is not as big a focus as it was in previous Pixar outings. The violence is more graphic and the physical and emotional pain more apparent, which might make it a harder sell for the light-heated child. Brad Bird, director of the stunning "Iron Giant," wrote and directed this stylized flic, and should be given credit for the span of his vision and ideas. Most of it works in the end, and the mistakes don't detract too much from the fact that this movie is mostly incredible ... oops. See you at the unemployment agency.