Flashy, but pretty ho-hum

Rating: 4/10 (27 February 2005)

When one walks into a Pixar film, one can usually expect the sort of quirky animated cleverness that the studio has become known for in such imaginative fare like "Toy Story 2," "A Bug's Life," and "Finding Nemo." In those films, Pixar re-imagines and reconfigures the established. Sharks undergoing therapy for cannibalism, or an ant committing suicide by walking into a drop of water, are creative re-workings of what we see and dismiss everyday. It takes creative minds to come up with such amusing alternatives to what would normally not elicit a second glance from all of us, and most importantly, it is possible and most plausible only in the world of animation where talking fishes and bugs do not seem totally ridiculous.
Such imagination is absent with their newest feature, "The Incredibles." This movie's creative insight is that, well, superheroes really CAN have mundane lives. The film is visually gorgeous but thematically empty, a merely average film that has been raised to celestial levels for what many have labeled its animated "realism," I'm guessing what most critics apocryphally mean when they notice shimmering wet hair or fluid body movements. Well, mimicking humans is not trailblazing Pixar's territory, but belongs first to the Squaresoft Pictures flop, "Final Fantasy: Spirits Within." The second one is a terrible film as most over-inflated, sci-fi anime can be, but "The Incredibles" has escaped such criticism largely due to critics falling in love with its pastel color scheme and its fidelity to cartoonish humans with real features (like said hair) amidst an environ of real water, fire, trees, etc. If making everything appear so "real" was the goal, why not just shoot a live-action film with CGI superimposed and save us all the time, money, and lavish plaudits?
The fact is were it not for the CGI, this film's reportedly high-minded drama would not garner any year-end awards. As some other reviewers have pointed out, it's as cliché-ridden as can be, even falling upon the sitcom-like contrived plots such as a series of coincidences making a wife believe her husband is cheating on her, or the nerdy girl not fitting in with the cool crop at school, only to fit in and receive invitations from the future prom king at the end (the creators could have taken a lesson from this year's anti-conformity "Napoleon Dynamite"). Most Pixar plots have been fairly simple with good messages, but what livens up nearly every story they have told are new takes on the humdrum. Turtles turned into stoner surfers in "Finding Nemo," for example, while "A Bug's Life" is teeming with new versions of a collection of insects. The Incredible family's superpowers are supposed to substitute for this lack of creative imagination, but the abilities are not inventive themselves. Super strength, flexibility, speed, invisibility are all brilliantly conceived, but as wonders lack variety to the eye, and since the Incredibles' world is modeled on the human world, there is also no escape into the beautiful rendering of the ocean or of a blown-up microcosm like in other Pixar features. As hard as it may seem to imagine, this movie more than any other Pixar film could have been filmed in live-action, a cardinal no-no suggestion for any animated flick.
The decision to make the film a drama devoid of humor is also not a wise one; scenes that would normally be infused by amusing side-characters are filled with sidekicks there only to advance the plot. Edna as a creation, for instance, is mildly amusing but is a simple caricature of Bond movies and fashion designers, supplying useful gadgets but lacking the imagination of a true creation (and not parody) of a Mr. Potato Head or Heimlich caterpillar. Jokes are not as edgy and wry as a result, and while its insistence on a conservative moral might be fresh in today's left-Hollywood climate (i.e. Manchurian Candidate, Spartan), its beaten to the ground ad-nauseum by every character who gets a turn at dictating it to the audience.
"The Incredibles" is not a terrible movie. Though uninspired, it's still technically marvelous animation. The story is initially amusing in points. The kitchen-sink drama is actually brutally honest, depicting family life (albeit superhero family life) at its most stultifying and completely routine, something very far from a traditionalist conservative message. There are even some good action scenes, especially when the speedy son discovers the true extent of his own superpowers. But maybe it's all that CGI, or a lack of original story, that made me consider "The Incredibles" more of a video game by its end rather than a feature film. The final boss battle could be straight from a platformer or role-playing game with one party of five unleashing attacks on one mechanical robot replete with attack points and weaknesses. By the final accounts, "The Incredibles" is really a very average movie, but has the potential to be an excellent video game. Take it from someone who plays them.