dazzling

Rating: 10/10 (19 January 2005)

The only thing that prevents THE INCREDIBLES from being the movie of the decade is the fact that Pixar or Brad Bird will inevitably top it within the next five years. This movie is a triumph on all fronts; it's so absorbing you hardly notice the flawless animation, which is nonetheless stunning. Almost a century of cartoons have led up to a moment of this kind of sophistication. The movie works, however, because it overwhelms its medium. It may be the CITIZEN KANE of toons. I waited for this movie over a long period of time and expected it to be absolutely grand. I still feel that I underestimated it.
Bird is more than likely the finest director working in animation today, and he's got some stiff competition. On his first feature, THE IRON GIANT, he fused a larger-than-life fantasy story and all the streamlined beauty that came with it into a human drama that could invite both wonder and tears.
Meanwhile, Pixar has become not only the finest animation studio to exist since the peaks of Disney and Warners but almost a modern Selznick International -- a mark of quality recognized like few other production companies, to the point that the Pixar label now probably means as much as (if not more than) the Disney logo on all their product. The Pixar touch is wide-ranging; they've done perfect comedy in TOY STORY and MONSTERS INC. and offered a brilliant adventure film with A BUG'S LIFE. They are best exemplified by Andrew Stanton's FINDING NEMO, a celebrated feature that brought wide-eyed wonder back to the multiplexes.
Combine Bird with Pixar and you knew you had a must-see picture. The shocker is just how far Bird carried the studio, and vice versa. Dreamworks, Fox, and Disney's in-house animators are right to live in fear. Not only is this movie the most monstrously entertaining thing to come along in ages, not only does it treat its audience with respect while still commanding awe, it takes a million risks and gets away with it because of its intelligence, conviction, and good humor. The cold emptiness in Bob's eyes when he holds Mirage by her neck after he's been crushed by what he thinks is an inconceivable loss... we've never seen this in a cartoon (at least, an American cartoon) before, and we've never really seen it done with such subtlety and excitement anywhere.
As in THE IRON GIANT, Bird tells a big story -- superheroes making a comeback -- then throws us into the human element, with some highly adult scenes and a comic wisdom that never, EVER stoops to the "faux-hip" humor common in other animated features. It's a movie with an underlying seriousness about its own craft. The comedy is knowing and warm, the drama intense and involving, the action as riveting as you'll ever see in any live action film. All of its ingredients have been enlivened with a sense of beauty and charm that spit in the eye of the prospect that cartoons don't matter. All that matters is brilliant storytelling and movie-making, and THE INCREDIBLES is the real thing. Pixar and Bird have another classic on their hands -- easily their best to date -- that one-ups nearly every other animated feature made so far. Long live them both.