Losing the Incredibles Magic

Rating: 4/10 (18 August 2018)

TL;DR While this film is visually and aurally appealing in Pixar standards, this film drops a lot of the aspects that made the original Incredibles unique in favor of a more box office friendly approach.
As a preface, I adored the first Incredibles growing up, and after re-watching it in preparation for this film, I still adore it. So, this review will carry some bias, because I think the Incredibles 2 is a perfectly OK film by itself.
What this film has going is its updated visuals, interesting and engaging action scenes, and music; or in general its aesthetic. Originally Director Brad Bird wanted the visuals of the Incredibles to mimic that of those Golden Age-Superhero posters back in the 50s/60s, and while the first film did a great job in context to what technology was available, this sequel nails it. The skyscrapers were massive and follow the simple geometry of modernist architecture, the trains, cars, and other vehicles were all futuristic in a modernist sense (again), the music while not so different from the original film was still magnificent and brassy, and the action was very impressive and flashy whereas the original film didn't have too many opportunities to show off this sort of choreography. And while the plot, characters, and script were meh, without the context of the original this film is a perfectly OK 5/10 and a perfect rental if you want to appreciate the high quality artistic direction that Pixar produces.
Now that being said, this film loses almost all the magic the original had. To keep this readable, I'll just mention two of the most annoying aspects of the film but be sure I had other qualms with this film and you can find most of them in other reviews.
The first aspect is line delivery. In re-watching the original, I noticed how snappy, quick, and sticky the dialogue was. Most people I know have at least memorized 2 scenes from the original and I can almost guarantee YOU the reader know the super suit scene by heart. Now how many lines from the Incredibles 2 can you recite? Maybe the "Math is Math" line but that might be it. One part of why this is because the voice actors who weren't in the original did not follow the cadence and speed that original voice actors, the most blatant violator being the voice actor for Void. Instead of sounding like someone who is a part of this 50s/60s-quick talking world, her nervous west coast girl delivery sounds sorely out of place like the picture of the time-travelling hipster. The closest voice actor to get to the delivery was Bob Odenkirk, but even he would sound out of place if he was casted in the original film and kept the same delivery. This aspect is hard to explain in words and this is more of guttural reaction to the dialogue, but hopefully if you re-watch the original you can tell too. The other aspect was how much this film just felt so standard. It has X number of action scenes, it has Y number of funny scenes, it needed to have 5 Jack Jack scenes, etc etc. The magic of the first film was how reserved the animation was to let the character designs, subtle facial animation, and dialogue shine. It is amazing how re-watchable the First Act is being it was primarily in a gray office building. There are so many scenes in the original Incredibles that were shot-reverse shot. A true sign of a director following an inspired vision to the end. What about the Incredibles 2? It relies heavily on a compilation of scenes that halt the progress of the plot to produce oohs, aahs, and laughter (talking to you Jack Jack, raccoon, and Edna) instead of quality scenes that can do the same (albeit less flashy) and give us insight into characters and conflicts.
Overall, I cannot discredit the Incredibles 2 too much for these aspects because these aspects are what I got from the original, me alone. If you want to watch a 3D animated movie with your family, go ahead and pop this on your living room screen, but if you want to watch a movie like the Incredibles, you will probably be disappointed.