Review: The Incredibles
Kam and I went to see The Incredibles last night. It was thoroughly enjoyable.
It was written and directed by Brad Bird, who directed and wrote the story for The Iron Giant. Unlike almost every other sf fan who saw Iron Giant, I wasn't thrilled by it; I thought it wasn't bad, and was worth seeing, but I wasn't all that enthusiastic about it.
I'm definitely enthusiastic about Incredibles, though. It has a few brief weak moments, but most of it is entertaining and fast-paced and charming and all-around delightful. The visuals are excellent throughout and occasionally astonishing. The action sequences are mostly great. There are sappy emotional bits and Important Family Messages, but they're handled well; a couple of moments brought tears to my eyes. And the movie is very funny almost all the way through. My favorite bits were a couple of extremely funny sequences featuring a costume designer named Edna, whose voice is done by the writer/director. (According to the IMDB, Edna's based on Edith Head, renowned movie costume designer, but I don't know what aspects of the character are based on Head.)
The music is good, too, though I don't think I consciously noticed that 'til the very nicely made closing credits sequence.
Anyway. Short version: Excellent movie. Go see it.
I gather there's a Fantastic Four movie in production; I suspect Incredibles steals a lot of that movie's thunder, since several aspects of Incredibles are clearly derived from the FF. I wouldn't be too surprised to hear kids come out of the FF movie saying, "Not bad, but they sure stole a lot from The Incredibles."
Also worth noting: the unrelated short that they show before the movie, "Boundin'," isn't bad. I thought the music (by writer/director Bud Luckey) was catchy and fun, and the lyrics were nicely done; it's hard to write sentences that sound like normal English but that happen to rhyme in all the right places. And I enjoyed the animation, and it probably helped put me in the right mood for the main feature. On the other hand, it was kinda heavy-handed in its overt Message. Still, it did make me laugh several times, and it was really charming. You can see a snippet on the Pixar site. Overall I'd say it's better than several of Pixar's other shorts, but not quite as good as "For the Birds."
Oh—in case you haven't seen 'em, the Pixar site also provides "outtakes" from a few of the feature movies.
