Great film but forgets who its audience is

Rating: Null/10 (21 December 2004)

Fifteen years ago the world was a different place; superheroes moved among and were constantly acting to keep us safe from danger and crime. However when Mr Incredible saves a man from coming suicide, he is sued for doing so, sparking a series of lawsuits against other superheroes. With the Government picking up the bill and public opinion turning against them, the superheroes retire into normal life incognito. Now, Mr Incredible lives with this wife and kids as Bob Parr, working in an insurance office and spending evenings with his friend Lucius (formally Fro-Zone) pining for the old days of daring-do. So when a mysterious offer of work as a superhero comes up, Bob jumps at the chance; but is everything as it seems on the mysterious island? Having left it as long as possible before going to the cinema to see this film in order to avoid the place being full of children, and I timed it reasonably well with the cinema only having about 40 other people in there and only about 15 children. The film opens well with some good action scenes and setting the historical frame for the story we are to be told  the wonderfully convincing soul-destruction of an "ordinary" life. It paints this very well and uses it to get into a bigger story about Bob's loss of manhood and achievement that could have easily been about a middle-age realisation of the loss of youth as much as about as the glory days in regards superpowers. It is pretty adult and dark throughout and for me this is its main failing, in that it seems to forget that all the marketing for this thing has been fired at kids and most screenings will have very young children in it.
Other Pixar films have got the balance spot on, but here we have a film that could easily have been PG for content but also has surprisingly little to keep children engaged. Most of them in my screening were shifting around or just sitting bored, with only a few laughs to be heard throughout the whole film. The content and material is much more suited to older children and adults but they are never going to do that with a film that can get the kiddie dollar and the pester power so why it wasn't made more suited for them is beyond me. However this is only a weakness if you have kids in the cinema with you, without them there is a lot of funny stuff, clever stuff and well written characters to get into; I did really enjoy the story and even found the action parts to be very exciting and very well done.
Visually the film is great and Pixar have greatly improved their human characters  of course they are not photo-realistic but that is not the point. The backdrops seem set in a 1950/60's America of superheroes, although it is rather timeless. It references heavily to things like Bond, Fantastic Four and spy thrillers but it never turns into the sort of reference heavy joking that can (and I believe will) date so many animated features that live and die on the quality of their spoofs and in-jokes. The end credits are incredibly cool and I did wonder why they had saved such great artwork until then instead of the opening credits, unless it was to keep potential spoilers out of the front of the film. The characters are great fun and are very well written. Mr Incredible is a very human man who we feel for easily and the investment put into him covers the lesser job put in with his family. The film lacks the collection of good support characters that are often put in things like Toy Story etc but does have a great minor role in the hilarious Edna. Nelson does very well with the lead role; Hunter is impressive and even the children are pretty good even if Fox overdoes the "all-American goodness" aspect of Dash. Jackson has a much smaller role than expected but is still very funny but I must admit that I found Jason Lee and his character to be annoying and unengaging  although I suppose it doesn't matter so much.
Overall this is a very enjoyable film but it is not one that is aimed at children other than to make money out of them. The marketing may tell you it is but really the story, 95% of the laughs, the action and the design of the film all say that it is for older children and adults to really get the good out of  young kids will only like some bits and the noise, although I could see many being scared by it more than loving it. Well written, funny, exciting and consistently interesting for all sorts of reasons and yet another great film from Pixar.