NY TIMES REVIEW: THE INCREDIBLES!

By Wind(up)bird on 2004-11-04 10:49:31

They keep finding new ways to celebrate mediocrity," grumbles Bob Parr, once known as Mr. Incredible, the patriarch of a superhero family languishing in middle-class suburban exile. written by A.O. Scott

He is referring to a pointless ceremony at his son's school, but his complaint is much more general, and it is one that animates "The Incredibles," giving it an edge of intellectual indignation unusual in a family-friendly cartoon blockbuster. Because it is so visually splendid and ethically serious, the movie raises hopes it cannot quite satisfy. It comes tantalizingly close to greatness, but seems content, in the end, to fight mediocrity to a draw.

By "they" Bob means the various do-gooders, meddlers and bureaucrats - schoolteachers, lawyers, politicians, insurance executives - who have driven the world's once-admired superheroes underground, into lives of bland split-level normalcy. "The Incredibles," written and directed by Brad Bird and released under the mighty Pixar brand, is not subtle in announcing its central theme. Some people have powers that others do not, and to deny them the right to exercise those powers, or the privileges that accompany them, is misguided, cruel and socially destructive.

Bob (voiced by Craig T. Nelson, best known for his title role on television's "Coach"), who was once a superman in both the Nietzschean and the DC Comics sense of the word, has been forced by a litigation-driven, media-fueled anti-superhero backlash into the flabby, dull life of a cubicle drone. He and his pal Lucius, a k a Frozone (Samuel L. Jackson), do a little clandestine moonlighting, with the help of a police scanner, but it hardly compensates for the 9-to-5 tedium of Bob's day job processing insurance claims.

His wife, Helen (Holly Hunter), a daring and feisty crime fighter named Elastagirl in their former life, now stays home raising their three children, two of whom have already manifested special abilities they are not allowed to use. Bob and Helen's teenage daughter, Violet (who speaks in the scratchy deadpan of the essayist and public radio storyteller Sarah Vowell), can make herself invisible and generate impermeable force fields, but these powers serve mainly as metaphors for her shyness and disconnection. Dash (Spencer Fox), her younger brother, uses his gift of superhuman speed for low-level mischief. Like their parents, the children are forced to conform to a society where "everyone is special, so no one is."

In the movie's view of things, this kind of misguided egalitarianism, enforced in petty ways at school and work, is not just stultifying but actively, murderously evil. The super-villain, a flame-haired nerd named Syndrome (Jason Lee), is a would-be superhero tormented by his own lack of special talents. From his high-tech island laboratory, populated by faceless minions, a slinky second-in-command (Elizabeth Pe?a) and giant killer robots, he plots a quasi-genocidal campaign against the former costumed crime fighters, whom he lures out of retirement by promising them the chance to practice their profession once again.

Syndrome's ultimate goal is not so much to rule the world as to force the rules that already govern it to their logical conclusion. His diabolical utopia will be cleansed of heroes: once he is done, he hisses, "everybody will be super, which means no one will be."

The intensity with which "The Incredibles" advances its central idea - it suggests a thorough, feverish immersion in both the history of American comic books and the philosophy of Ayn Rand - is startling. At last, a computer-animated family picture worth arguing with, and about! Luckily, though, Mr. Bird's disdain for mediocrity is not simply ventriloquized through his characters, but is manifest in his meticulous, fiercely coherent approach to animation.

A veteran of both "The Simpsons" and "King of the Hill," Mr. Bird was also responsible for "The Iron Giant," an exquisite and poignant variation on the sensitive robot theme and one of the most dazzling attempts so far by an American filmmaker to match the strangeness and lucidity of Japanese anime. The clean, modernist lines of "The Incredibles" suggest an attempt to bring some of the beautiful flatness of anime into three dimensions. In contrast to the antic busyness of movies like "Shrek 2" and "Shark Tale" - and even to the kinetic bright colors of other Pixar productions like "Monsters, Inc." and "Finding Nemo" - "The Incredibles" is spare and precise.

The characters are drawn with such sharp wit - both Bob and Helen's bodies are acutely stylized renderings of what happens to parental bodies as middle age approaches - that the austere beauty of their environment takes a while to register. The settings, especially a modern mansion belonging to Edna, the superheroes' fashion maven and confidante, are marvelous and eye-popping, but Mr. Bird presents them with an artist's low-key confidence rather than a salesman's anxious emphasis.

The movie is also refreshingly quiet, using music sparingly and showing as much attention to aural nuance as it does to visual detail. Until the last act - the inevitable showdown with Syndrome - "The Incredibles" may resonate more strongly with adults than with children, as it is, at its heart, a story of mid-life frustration and compromise, examining the toll that unfulfilling work can exact on a marriage, and the heady rebirth (accompanied by a bit of marital confusion) that professional satisfaction can bring.

But then, perhaps inevitably, Mr. Bird steers his heroes in the direction of compromise. The Incredible family may stand up to the forces of mandatory mediocrity, but "The Incredibles," in the end, has no choice but to succumb. The climax is loud and unimaginative - a situation cribbed from "Spy Kids 2" tricked out with noise and fireballs. This, of course, is what the public demands, and while it may help the movie succeed as large-scale entertainment, it does so at the expense of some of its daring idiosyncrasy. The lesson is sobering, and a little dispiriting. If every movie is required to be spectacular, then no movie really can be.

"The Incredibles" is rated PG (Parental guidance suggested). It has some violent and potentially upsetting scenes.

'The Incredibles'
Opens today nationwide.

WRITTEN AND DIRECTED by Brad Bird; directors of photography, Janet Lucroy, Patrick Lin and Andrew Jimenez; edited by Stephen Schaffer; music by Michael Giacchino; production designer, Lou Romano; produced by John Walker; released by Walt Disney Pictures and Pixar Animation Studios. Running time: 121 minutes. This film is rated PG.

WITH THE VOICES OF: Craig T. Nelson (Bob Parr/Mr. Incredible), Holly Hunter (Helen Parr/Elastigirl), Samuel L. Jackson (Lucius Best/Frozone), Sarah Vowell (Violet), Spencer Fox (Dash), Elizabeth Pe?a (Mirage), Jason Lee (Buddy Pine/Syndrome) John Ratzenberger (Underminer) and Dominique Louis (Bomb Voyage).

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