Pixar Saves the Day!

Rating: 8/10 (5 November 2004)

With their most recent effort, championed entirely by Brad Bird, Pixar saves the day fashionably.
With their most interesting effort to date, The Incredibles, Pixar at last factors in human characters (much more associable to the average family, superpowers excluded) and puts their special effects wizardry to work in new, exciting ways. I thought the action scenes would be boring CGI circle-jerks, but instead were genuinely interesting and added to the movie.
It had plenty of great laughs (from seeing Mr. Incredible work at an Insurance Firm, to the brilliant character Edna 'E' Mode) excellent effects and action, and enjoyable (even rich at times) characters.
But, like every other Pixar movie, its strongest asset is its core idea (it is the antithesis of what made movies like Shark Tale fail): The story has a simple, universal core idea: Evil is afoot, and those who are good most conquer obstacles to stop it. Like Finding Nemo (where the goal was for little Nemo to make it home to his dad to be happy again), it has such a central, universal theme that works so well.
The Incredibles raises but one question: Is Pixar capable of making a bad film?