Smart, Funny, but inconsistent tone and morality

Rating: 8/10 (2 December 2004)

This is a very enjoyable movie, with a lot of smart and interesting twists to the superhero genre. however it feels like two separate movies. The first half is more serious and is like a cross between a superhero spoof and the idea of a superhero taken as reality. The problem comes when the movie switches from being something that questioned the genre and made it more real to something that no longer takes its characters seriously. By the end this is just a ride movie, not an action movie with consistent character development and a point that people could walk away with. now, i'm not talking about a sound-byte "Message" that was missing, because something like that actually was there, it was just betrayed by the ending. The family of the incredibles became people with extraordinary powers rather than truly special or extraordinary people. *Spoiler* The lack of responsibility towards the villain that Mr. "incredible" showed disproves that he is anything other than a man with superhuman strength. He is not a hero. His ego had a part in creating the villain. syndrome had free will and choice to do what he did and it couldn't be called Mr incredible's fault, but Mr. incredible does kill him in a very cavalier manner with no attempt to capture or rehabilitate him, as a hero, incredible is supposed to be better in character than regular people. The film also treated the killing of syndrome as a joke, with that cape thing. on the one hand something like that can be considered funny in a cartoonish comic book setting but not in a world that is supposed to be taken seriously as the world of the incredibles had been set up to be. This movie had great potential and is still excellent in many respects, but it is not the great film that many critics and audiences seem to think it is.