Not all that incredible

Rating: 6/10 (7 November 2004)

Pixar's latest offering, The Incredibles, takes a stab at the superhero genre. Saying it's better than most superhero films isn't saying much; is it really a feat to produce a better film than Daredevil, Hellboy, or Catwoman? The Incredibles does have a nice twist working for it: what if, like some demented Alan Moore comic, the supers were no longer welcome to do their job and had to settle for being normal people? How would they respond to that? That's the basic gist of The Incredibles, and we focus mostly on Mr. Incredible, aka Bob Parr (Craig T. Nelson), who is definitely having trouble fitting in. His wife Helen (aka Elasti-Girl, voiced by Holly Hunter) is having an easier time of it. But when an opportunity to go adventuring again knocks on Bob's door, he furtively accepts it, not thinking through the consequences or asking too many questions.
By now Pixar has perfected their production abilities. Everything is flawlessly fashioned, and that other world they are able to create, while never before quite so close to our own, is still very convincing here. Though we see few other heroes (pretty much only Frozone, voiced by Samuel T. Jackson), we are given enough of the 'super' world to make everything believable. Pixar tends to excel at world-building, and since this film was handled by the talented Brad Bird, you'd expect nothing less.
The problem is, there's a certain indefinable something missing from The Incredibles. It's fun, mostly, and enjoyable, and pretty well paced most of the time; it gets a bit talky in stretches, and the multiple attempts at an ending irritated me (just end the movie already, Brad!). The villain Syndrome (voiced by Jason Lee but damned if he doesn't look and sound like Mark Hamill) was well-thought out, even if his major scheme is lifted lock, stock, and barrel from The Watchmen. But unlike other Pixar films, this one seems to lack a little heart. The family scenes with the Parrs are all nice, and the kids Dash and Violet are well-realized, mostly (Dash gets all the best action scenes, especially the one stolen from Return of the Jedi). But this movie lacks that special spark that say, Finding Nemo or especially Toy Story had. At the end of both of those films, I felt a wealth of emotion that actually moved me (Toy Story 2 especially); here, there was nothing, just a recognition that the story had come to a nice place to end. That's not bad, and there's nothing wrong with it, but it certainly doesn't live up to the other Pixar movies (except Bug's Life, which I never cared for).
It doesn't help that it feels like you've seen so much of this before. Granted, there are so many superhero films, cartoons, and comic books that we've been inundated with variations on the idea. But while The Incredibles handles the genre reasonably well, there was a LOT of it that reminded me of other movies or stories, and thus at times it felt predictable (which you simply couldn't say about Nemo or either of the Toy Stories). Frozone is nothing more than a well-rendered Iceman; and while Elasti-Girl is pretty original, Mr. Incredible is simply the answer to the question, 'What if you had too much Clark Kent and not enough Superman?' and that's been explored a LOT, given that Clark's had two TV shows in the past decade.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the film. Dash's action scenes are all a great deal of fun, and the Brad-Bird-voice fashion designer, Edna Mode is hysterical  really the best character in the whole thing. But Syndrome the villain is hackneyed, even down to the underground lair and the pseudo femme-fatale henchwoman; if you were going to do a fresh twist on the super-hero genre, why rely on so many clichés? Ultimately The Incredibles is a fun diversion, but little more. A lot of movies would be happy just to achieve that, but given Pixar's track record honestly I was expecting a little more. Certainly it's worth going to see The Incredibles in the theater, you'll have fun, it's just not the keeper that Pixar's other films are and doesn't merit a place on your DVD shelf like their other movies. Or like Shark Tale.