"I will also fix the hobo suit." -- The Incredibles
Considering the number of people I know who like the movie, I'm surprised it took me this long to see it. But I finally have and therefore bring this review to you. If it's at all incoherent, I apologize, but I was up way, way too late last night.
The Incredibles is Disney/Pixar's latest CG yarn telling the tale of superheros beaten down by evil lawyers. It's Disney, so you know how it turns out.
I actually liked this movie ... kinda. It has a number of flaws, but overall, I rather enjoyed it, especially for a modern Disney movie (most of which have been subpar). This movie's got some darn good visuals, fairly good plot, and pretty good characters, and overall makes for a quite enjoyable viewing experience. But it wasn't Great. And it could have been.
Let's start with the number one flaw (in my mind): the dialogue. Much of it was fine, but my Fakey Sense tingled every couple of minutes, alerting me to lines which were just off. It's hard to pin it down to single examples (none are anywhere near as bad as the fumbles of Day After Tomorrow), but here are the two that most stuck out, in my opinion: Robert's little speech to his family when they were incarcerated and almost everything out of Violet's mouth. That speech was terribly cliched, terribly hackneyed, and extremely embarrassing. It just didn't fit. Whoever wrote for Violet clearly knows nothing about either 12-14 year old girls or talking. She has the coolest powers of anyone in her family (again, in my opinion, although since none of them are offensive, she doesn't have the option of soloing, which kinda sucks for her. I suppose she could get a handgun of some sort, but everyone knows that superheros don't use guns) and isn't irritating like Dash, but almost nothing that she says is realistic. As I said, most of the dialogue does its job without any problems, but there aren't really any high peaks to offset the fair number of valleys.
Flaw Numero Duos: illogical causality. Some things just didn't make any sense. For example, the lawsuits (at least the two against Robert which were mentioned) would not be held in favor of the plaintiff. I do realize that they are lampooning the recent influx of stupid lawsuits, and that this is a necessary catalyst for the movie to happen, but no judge would award someone money because they were stopped from committing suicide, a crime (if you know of an exception, shut up. I want to keep my naivete about the judicial system not completely sucking, thank you). Because the movie doesn't even explain what specifically the second lawsuit is about, it, to me, seemed random. Syndrome's transition from "IncrediBoy wannabe" to "evil genius" didn't make much sense to me either. Clearly, he was dejected, but he claims that being sent home by Mr. Incredible taught him that "you can't trust your heroes" or something. Vastly illogical. I would have liked to see a much greater trauma than that cause his descent into evility. And did I mention Edna's manic depression? She suddenly decided with great conviction that Robert is fooling around. This isn't a huge deal, but it helped mar the flick.
Flaw number three: inconsistent tech level. Even during the introduction fifteen years before most of the movie, the superheros have technology far beyond that that we today have. Syndrome's gadgets are wildly fantastic. Edna's compound uses equipment to display her work that we can only dream about today. And yet everything else in the movie is at best five years in the future, and could probably exist just as easily a decade or two in the past. The army still uses cold war era tanks and machine guns. Offices are still predominately paper-based. Cars function and look almost exactly the same. Clearly, superheros and supervillians will have better stuff than the average shmuck on the street, but this doesn't excuse the ridiculous disparity.
Flaw number four: Disney. This means primarily two things: A) In me, Disney movies provoke this unrelenting desire to join in the action. For some reason, I badly want to enter the movie and change things. Since this is impossible, I experience great frustration. Ironically enough, this parallels Robert's primary dilemma, which almost tempts to write it off as intentional, but since this happens every time I watch Disney movies, I very very much doubt it. B) The PG rating is a strange one because it's not quite simple enough for most little kids to fully understand but not quite complex enough for teenagers or adults to fully appreciate. Perhaps there exists a thin region of age for whom this movie is absolutely perfect, but that makes your primary audience rather ephemeral. The most you can hope for in the long term is loyalty. It feels, to me, like an adult movie which was watered down some. I thought the movie could have really benefited from going for PG-13, just because every so often I sensed some artistic restraint (which is BAD beyond reason). I anxiously await Pixar's next movie, free from Disney's guiding hand.
Let me reassure you, however, that this is a movie worth your while. It's just not Great. And it could have been.
Action: 4/5 Spandex suits (The actions sequences were pretty darn good. I wasn't completely Wow-ed, but they were still very very good).
Voice Acting: 3.5/5 parallel pencils (Most of the voice actors merely did ok, merely sufficed. Some of the emphasis given to some of the words was very odd, almost to the point of a caricature. Robert Parr's voice actor did really well, in my opinion).
Story: 4/5 broken robots (Other than a few internal logical errors, I thought the plot was mostly quite interesting).
Sound: 3/5 frozen policicles (Good, solid superhero music and good, solid sound effects helped support the action, although they never really distinguished themselves).
Humor: 3/5 rocket ships (Although there were very very few direct jokes and/or gags, the movie had a goodly amount of humor lying about. It did its job).
Dialogue: 2/5 tiny cars (as I said, I consider the dialogue to be the weakest point of the movie).
Visuals: 4/5 flaming babies (This is Pixar. Clearly, the visuals will be darned good. They didn't knock my socks off, but then again, not a whole lot does. It would be nice to see them attempt realistic humans, just once. Nitpicks: lips [almost no one has them] and wet hair [very poorly done, that]).
Special Features (DVD): 3.5/5 blinking bombs (Mostly quite good. I don't know if it can be lumped here, but the casing of the DVD seems like overkill: sleeve, latches, and very secure/complicated center holder. What in God's name do they think we're planning to do with it? And I really didn't like the featurette "Jack-Jack Attack." Jack-Jack has way too many and way too random powers).
Overall (not necessarily determined by the above categories): 3.5/5 (It was good, and entertaining, but it could have been Great).
The Incredibles is Disney/Pixar's latest CG yarn telling the tale of superheros beaten down by evil lawyers. It's Disney, so you know how it turns out.
I actually liked this movie ... kinda. It has a number of flaws, but overall, I rather enjoyed it, especially for a modern Disney movie (most of which have been subpar). This movie's got some darn good visuals, fairly good plot, and pretty good characters, and overall makes for a quite enjoyable viewing experience. But it wasn't Great. And it could have been.
Let's start with the number one flaw (in my mind): the dialogue. Much of it was fine, but my Fakey Sense tingled every couple of minutes, alerting me to lines which were just off. It's hard to pin it down to single examples (none are anywhere near as bad as the fumbles of Day After Tomorrow), but here are the two that most stuck out, in my opinion: Robert's little speech to his family when they were incarcerated and almost everything out of Violet's mouth. That speech was terribly cliched, terribly hackneyed, and extremely embarrassing. It just didn't fit. Whoever wrote for Violet clearly knows nothing about either 12-14 year old girls or talking. She has the coolest powers of anyone in her family (again, in my opinion, although since none of them are offensive, she doesn't have the option of soloing, which kinda sucks for her. I suppose she could get a handgun of some sort, but everyone knows that superheros don't use guns) and isn't irritating like Dash, but almost nothing that she says is realistic. As I said, most of the dialogue does its job without any problems, but there aren't really any high peaks to offset the fair number of valleys.
Flaw Numero Duos: illogical causality. Some things just didn't make any sense. For example, the lawsuits (at least the two against Robert which were mentioned) would not be held in favor of the plaintiff. I do realize that they are lampooning the recent influx of stupid lawsuits, and that this is a necessary catalyst for the movie to happen, but no judge would award someone money because they were stopped from committing suicide, a crime (if you know of an exception, shut up. I want to keep my naivete about the judicial system not completely sucking, thank you). Because the movie doesn't even explain what specifically the second lawsuit is about, it, to me, seemed random. Syndrome's transition from "IncrediBoy wannabe" to "evil genius" didn't make much sense to me either. Clearly, he was dejected, but he claims that being sent home by Mr. Incredible taught him that "you can't trust your heroes" or something. Vastly illogical. I would have liked to see a much greater trauma than that cause his descent into evility. And did I mention Edna's manic depression? She suddenly decided with great conviction that Robert is fooling around. This isn't a huge deal, but it helped mar the flick.
Flaw number three: inconsistent tech level. Even during the introduction fifteen years before most of the movie, the superheros have technology far beyond that that we today have. Syndrome's gadgets are wildly fantastic. Edna's compound uses equipment to display her work that we can only dream about today. And yet everything else in the movie is at best five years in the future, and could probably exist just as easily a decade or two in the past. The army still uses cold war era tanks and machine guns. Offices are still predominately paper-based. Cars function and look almost exactly the same. Clearly, superheros and supervillians will have better stuff than the average shmuck on the street, but this doesn't excuse the ridiculous disparity.
Flaw number four: Disney. This means primarily two things: A) In me, Disney movies provoke this unrelenting desire to join in the action. For some reason, I badly want to enter the movie and change things. Since this is impossible, I experience great frustration. Ironically enough, this parallels Robert's primary dilemma, which almost tempts to write it off as intentional, but since this happens every time I watch Disney movies, I very very much doubt it. B) The PG rating is a strange one because it's not quite simple enough for most little kids to fully understand but not quite complex enough for teenagers or adults to fully appreciate. Perhaps there exists a thin region of age for whom this movie is absolutely perfect, but that makes your primary audience rather ephemeral. The most you can hope for in the long term is loyalty. It feels, to me, like an adult movie which was watered down some. I thought the movie could have really benefited from going for PG-13, just because every so often I sensed some artistic restraint (which is BAD beyond reason). I anxiously await Pixar's next movie, free from Disney's guiding hand.
Let me reassure you, however, that this is a movie worth your while. It's just not Great. And it could have been.
Action: 4/5 Spandex suits (The actions sequences were pretty darn good. I wasn't completely Wow-ed, but they were still very very good).
Voice Acting: 3.5/5 parallel pencils (Most of the voice actors merely did ok, merely sufficed. Some of the emphasis given to some of the words was very odd, almost to the point of a caricature. Robert Parr's voice actor did really well, in my opinion).
Story: 4/5 broken robots (Other than a few internal logical errors, I thought the plot was mostly quite interesting).
Sound: 3/5 frozen policicles (Good, solid superhero music and good, solid sound effects helped support the action, although they never really distinguished themselves).
Humor: 3/5 rocket ships (Although there were very very few direct jokes and/or gags, the movie had a goodly amount of humor lying about. It did its job).
Dialogue: 2/5 tiny cars (as I said, I consider the dialogue to be the weakest point of the movie).
Visuals: 4/5 flaming babies (This is Pixar. Clearly, the visuals will be darned good. They didn't knock my socks off, but then again, not a whole lot does. It would be nice to see them attempt realistic humans, just once. Nitpicks: lips [almost no one has them] and wet hair [very poorly done, that]).
Special Features (DVD): 3.5/5 blinking bombs (Mostly quite good. I don't know if it can be lumped here, but the casing of the DVD seems like overkill: sleeve, latches, and very secure/complicated center holder. What in God's name do they think we're planning to do with it? And I really didn't like the featurette "Jack-Jack Attack." Jack-Jack has way too many and way too random powers).
Overall (not necessarily determined by the above categories): 3.5/5 (It was good, and entertaining, but it could have been Great).
posted by Lexi Archer | 5:28 PM
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