Pretty good!

Rating: 8/10 (14 June 2018)

"Incredibles-2" - bright, vigorous, dynamic, full of humor and funny cartoon scenes for family viewing. Everything is fine in it, unless you compare it with the original film and especially with the best films "Pixar", published in the pre-Disney era. Alas, after the purchase of "Pixar", in the "Disney" and failed to create a single sequel that can surpass the original films and "The Incredibles-2" was no exception on this list.
The director and scriptwriter of the first "The Incredibles" Brad Bird three years ago peremudril with the failed "Earth of the Future", so this time I decided not to take risks, having made almost a complete remake of my own film. Dramaturgy is again built around playing up family problems and places of people with abilities in society, and the main antagonist still believes that in his troubles, born from a distant childhood, only superheroes are to blame. Of course, watching the same story, retold the second time, even with the addition of a funny Jack Jack, is not as interesting as the first, especially given the number of films about superheroes that have appeared over the last decade.
The expected change in the plot was only the distribution of roles in the superfamily Parrov. Now Elastiko earns money in the corporation "Devor", at the same time saving the world and the reputation of superheroes, and Mister Exclusiveness awaits a full family break-out in one of the mansions of the Devors, a midlife crisis, chronic insomnia, depression and the problem of finding a new identity. Detective intrigue, which was the hallmark of the first "The Incredibles", this time became more predictable. In both films, the main villain reveals long before the final, but if in the original film the appearance of Toddler's kid became a real surprise for the audience, then in the sequel the main villain is easily guessed already in the tenth minute of the film. In order to somehow diversify the plot, Bird tried to go many times to the tried and tested way - to increase the team of superheroes. In theory, this could give the sequel a new breath, but in reality it looks artificially and somewhat strange, especially considering that in the first film Buddy made a total purge of the superhero world.
If the original cartoon was equally interesting to children and adults, the new "The Incredibles" turned out to be more straightforward, simplistic and childish. Adult viewers can be more pleased with the guessing of references to various films that permeate all the plot lines of the sequel. Already at the very beginning, Byrd plays with amusement the famous scene of erasing memory from the "Men in Black", then the plot moves along the rolled track of "Hancock", telling about the need for good PR for superheroes, in the middle it smoothly passes to "Bondiana" with the appropriate style and music , and ends with a retelling of a couple episodes of "People X".
Children such complex allusions will be incomprehensible, but they will like the dynamics and humor of the new film, which are significantly added, in comparison with the original. Cartoon cheerfully begins immediately after the battle with Buddy Payne, which ended the first "The Incredibles" and after that famously rushes through a lot of adventures, pursuit and fights, right up to the finale. The fun this time is built, mainly around the polymorphic Jack Jack, who adores not only cookies, but also a zombie, who can not understand anything good a child can. All this, together with the immediacy and uncontrollability of the manifestation of emotions and various superpowers, delivers to the father a lot of hard minutes. However, he gets not only him, but also a thieving raccoon. His fight with Jack Jack, made in the style of Walt Disney's classic films, has tangible moral defects, but it also causes the most laughter in the hall.
Of course, through the abundance of fun and action scenes from all sides, the ideological aspects of the "children's" cartoon also slip. As a positive US Secretary of State, the image of Hollywood's favorite Hollywood Clinton is easily discernible, and feminist ideas permeate all the plot lines of the film from the first to the last frame. Starting with the "Mulan", released in 1998, militant feminism has become the main semantic concept of Disney products, adding with each new cartoon. "The Incredibles-2" raises its banner to such a height that it will be difficult to surpass in the future, because absolutely all the female characters in it from Violet to Evelyn DeVore not only completely surpass their narrow-minded, listless and incapable partners, but also conduct among themselves amusing discussions about the role of women in society. On the one hand, this really reflects certain trends in public life, but on the other hand it directly programs them. It's funny that the villain Ekranotiran is just talking through television to zombie Americans that in the modern world people are completely lazy, they stopped critically assessing information and simply mindlessly absorb the dregs that are pouring on them from every screen every day.
Somewhat strange in the cartoon about the family is built and the supply of family values. The Parrov family is in fact completely connected only at the very end, under the threat of survival, and before that, the male and female parts of the family practically do not interact. Elastiko, completely forgetting about the family and the baby Jack Jack, after work prefers to rest in an expensive hotel, and Violet is absorbed in the first teenage love, not noticing anyone around her. In the end, it turns out that Edna Modd, voiced in the original by Brad Bird himself, puts much more effort into the education of the younger son Parov than his own mother.
Well, unlike the dubious value assumptions, the technical side of the cartoon is flawless. A huge time difference between the first and second cartoons allows you to clearly see what a huge path made computer animation in the last decade. Thanks to the improvement of the technologies for the transmission of facial expressions and emotions, from time to time it really seems that on the screen there are actors that are not drawn, but live.
In general, if you do not pay attention to the secondary, banal and straightforward plot and crumpled finale, the cartoon fully fulfills its functions of easy summer entertainment for the whole family. But for many years Piksar has raised the bar not only technical, but also the semantic content of its best cartoons, that against their background, "The Incredibles-2" looks just like a tuned eight next to the newest Mercedes.