A 1960s throwback film with conservative undertones

Rating: 6/10 (14 May 2019)

This animated film, which is clearly a 1960s throwback, loosely based in 1963, carries with it the similar conservative undertones to the first movie. After failing to stop the Undertaker who steals money from the bank, Elastigirl (Helen), Mr. Incredible (Bob), and Frozone (Lucius) are approached by a male capitalist, Winston, a sort of Madison Avenue type, who wants to rebrand superheroes ("supers") and make them legal. He tells the tale of his father, who kinda looks like Andrew Carnegie, who he says "loved" superheroes, whom we find later he avoided going to the safe room because he thought that "supers" would save him, and he was killed by robbers. They are helped by his tech-savvy sister, Evelyn, and the family is moved to one of Winston's mansions he is "not using." Elastgirl is basically paid to break laws, since "supers" are still illegal, to raise the profile of superheroes. In the meantime, Bob becomes the stay-at-home dad, which clearly threatens his "manhood" as he watches his teenage daughter Violet and ten-year-old troublemaker son, Dash, and the infant, Jack-Jack. In the process, he shows himself as incompetent parent, while Edna, the fashion designer for "supers," watches Jack-Jack for a short time.
Ultimately, the villain of this film is Evelyn, who wants to make "supers" illegal forever as she believes, not wrongly, that they shouldn't be trusted. She believes she is doing the "right thing" with her hypnosis technology (which allows people to be controlled through special glasses they where), more than her brother, Winston, seeing him, whom she once call "Mr. Free Enterprise," as deluded and living in the past. It should be no surprise that she is ultimately foiled her plan, depending on media attention and having an ability to spread her message. Funnily, her plan is unnecessarily complex and she could have accomplished the same with fewer "supers." Even so, she is a bit more compelling than villains in other films, like the one in the first film in 2004.
It is with this, we get into the conservative undertones. Not only does Bob work to save his wife, Helen, who falls into the damsel in distress stereotype, but the capitalist, Winston, ends up living and is painted positively in this film. Instead, Evelyn is a more devious superhero than Syndrome in the first film (who was also a murderous psychopath), who wants to make "supers" illegal is painted as terrible. As all the adult "supers" are under the hypnosis of Evelyn, it ends up being the "kids" who save the day, and then they work together to prevent the ship from crashing into the city. It reminds me of what the character, Carmen, says in the 2001 film, Spy Kids (and a common theme throughout the films in that series), "never send an adult to do a kid's job." Some could say that like the first film, this film "celebrates marriage, courage, responsibility, and high achievement," which are inherently conservative values. Additionally, when Violet points out that Evelyn will get a slap on the wrist because she is rich, Winston chuckles at this and says that we do not know what "the future will bring," while the other "supers" seeming to not completely trust him anymore. Again, like in the first film, Bob is not totally faithful with his wife in that she does not tell her everything, like that Jack-Jack has superpowers. What does that say about him?
While I have my problems with this film, as I note in the above review, I still rate it as a 6 out of 10, because it is an effective drama and a relatively simple storyline. It ends with the whole family of "supers" (Jack-Jack, Violet, Dash, Bob, and Helen) speeding away to catch a set of criminals with machine guns, while Tony Rydinger, who Violet was going on a date with, since the first date was ruined by his mind being wiped of all memory of Violet by the shadowy government agent Rick.