"... and don't fire the baby inside the house!"

Rating: 8/10 (19 June 2018)

... is the funniest line in this totally entertaining sequel. That's particularly appropriate because you can make a good case that the main character (if there is one) whose story arc runs through the whole film is baby Jack-Jack, who's cheerfully and accidentally discovering his wide array of 'powers' that the rest of the Parrs have to learn to manage. The best sequence in the whole movie, I thought, was an extended dust-up between Jack-Jack and an amazingly plucky and persistent raccoon. (!) In the midst of a film built on charming homage and spoofing of superhero movies, that scene stands out as totally original. The little guy is incredibly cute (it's the eyes), and wait till you see what happens now when he sneezes.
The rest of what I'll say is a bunch of my favorite bits, so if you haven't seen the movie yet, you might not want to read further -- come on back later.
I give this an 8/10 because it's not deep, but it's well crafted fun from beginning to end, absolutely worth a night at the cinema. Incredibles 2 as a sequel doesn't have the advantage of being an origin story (which I generally like, unlike some viewers), but there are lots of inventive touches with the obligatory fight and chase scenes, and somewhat surprisingly the first third of the movie -- where all the setup happens -- is actually quite measured, deliberate, and (gasp!) almost adult in feel. Once you suspend disbelief to put yourself in a world where Supers exist, a lot of good questions come up. What about collateral damage to ordinary people and property, which most superhero movies (and comics) skate right past? Money problems too -- if your profession is 'superhero' and that's what you're good at, how do you make a living if that job has been outlawed? And if it's a whole family of them, how do they all get their share of the action when school, groceries, and baby care always need managing?
All the Parrs and their buddy Frozone have good scenes with lots of side material. Bob learns in-the-trenches parenting. Violet goes back and forth with her targetted to-be-boyfriend Nick (who's been rehabilitated into a decent kid from the jock-in-training that he was in the original). Dash gets dad's old supercar to play with. And especially, Helen gets lots of action on her own recovering her old superheroing (superheroine-ing?) days. There are loads of other nice touches. The Parrs are given the run of an unused mansion built by "an eccentric billionaire who wanted lots of secret entrances" (thanks, Bruce Wayne). The runaway-favorite character Edna Mold is a ringer for famous old-Hollywood fashion designer Edith Head, which fits nicely into the understated retro feel of the whole production (no one seems to be using cellphones, for example). And near the end, there's a sequence where some of our heroes are wearing luminous goggles that turn them into zombies obeying the villain's commands. They look passively out of the screen at the audience, who are in turn looking back with our 3D glasses. Weird meta moment.
I like that the cartoon style of Incredibles 2 is a very close match to the original, which was an essential part of its charm. No attempts here at something glossier and more advanced like e.g. How to Train Your Dragon did with its sequel -- as the artwork becomes more 'real' it also becomes less pure fun, like comics we read as kids. Now the costumes: while Frozone has his complete body suit covering almost his whole head, the Parrs have these little black masks that don't disguise anything but nevertheless seem to work, like Clark Kent's glasses. Another fun bit is how the masks stretch and compress with their facial expressions. One improvement with the artwork is the hair (Helen gets several scenes on her high-speed motorcycle with hair blowing pretty realistically, and she has lots of closeups that are really quite expressive.)
However, there's something odd that has happened in the 14 years between the original Incredibles and its sequel. Special effects and CGI in live-action superhero movies have advanced so much that the ground between them and actual cartoon/comics has almost closed. In other words, watching The Incredibles (1 or 2) doesn't feel radically different from Avengers Infinity War, which is the closest yet to replicating what happens in superhero comics. Not that this is a complaint.