"No capes!!"

Rating: 6/10 (24 January 2009)

Just after superheroes Mr. Incredible and Elastigirl tie the knot, a series of insane lawsuits by citizens affected by Incredible's feats of bravery prompt the couple to go underground as suburbanites Bob and Helen Parr; fifteen years and three kids later, Bob is recruited by a mysterious organization to fight a powered-crazed machine on a remote tropical island, but his association with this outfit may prove more dangerous than he's initially led to believe. Disney-Pixar animated adventure has flair and in-jokes (both verbal and visual) to spare, but only the canny opening moments are really engaging (with pseudo interviews and retro newsreel footage). By the second half, it has become another video-game-turned-movie, however it never looks less than stunning and almost retains its fresh wit to the finish line. Writer-director Brad Bird doesn't seem to mind if the overload of action completely self-destructs, as long as he can get in a few more visual whammies (while mounting three continuous endings--two would have been sufficient). A sequence with Mr. Incredible bound and tortured doesn't work at all, and neither does the second ending with a surprise from baby Jack Jack. The voice-over work is very good (with perhaps too much of Holly Hunter), and the film has amusing and amazing details throughout, but somewhere along the way the story comes undone. **1/2 from ****