8.6 ?? This movie was LAME.

Rating: 4/10 (9 November 2004)

Right about now I'm thinking that there must be something wrong with *me.* After all, the world is saying that this is an 8.6 movie, and people are giving it 10s. And I thought it SUCKED.
The pacing is horrible. The first hour is positively boring, unfunny, and the action scenes are so fast that you can hardly tell what's going on. There were a few great moments, but not enough to make me really care about any of the characters. I was actually going to *walk out* because it was simply dull. But then every once in a while, something interesting would happen and I'd want to keep giving it a chance.
OK, so in the last 20 minutes or so, the story actually picks up. And by that I mean you can *follow* what's happening, because the pacing is better and not all crazy and frenetic. For a while the characters slow down and reflect on what's happening to them, and they seem to be real people. There's also some good (creative) action toward the end, and the villain's plot is the only truly well-crafted part of the story.
It's annoying that the humor attempts are mostly just cheap things that they throw in on the side (kid on big wheel) that have nothing to do with the story, or repetitive sight gags like Mr. Incredible accidentally breaking some household object because he doesn't know his own strength. Meanwhile, there are HUGE tracts of dialogue that are absent of cleverness, or just too fast, mumbled, or obscured by FX sounds.
I did not care for the design of this movie generally - often the characters' eyes were dark and flat. They did not have that shine in them, the living sparkle that would draw me in. While I sat there I thought about other animated films where the eyes seemed positively beaming with emotions, and here everyone seemed like a wind-up toy. Maybe I am just too "old-school" animation, but it seems like there is so much focus now on light and shading and detail of the surrounding scenes that the distinction and liveliness of the characters has been lost.
I loved The Lion King and the Toy Story movies as much as anyone else. I saw Shrek 2 three times. I also disliked Home on the Range, Treasure Planet and Atlantis for the same reasons the critics did.
But for some reason this movie just did NOT deliver for me. Bland script, uneven action, minimally sympathetic characters... Not to mention some rather annoying, obligatory add-in scenes like the goth daughter who is suddenly more popular at school and the cute guy asks her out, and Samuel Jackson's character who is totally undeveloped.
I also found it really weird that the villain did not have *ONE, single* humorous or clever line.
So apparently I'm in some 1% that disliked this movie. But be warned, people:
I was once like you.
One day you're going along enjoying all these movies, and then suddenly they all suck but no one agrees with you.