Bump... to try and reassess all the love for Brad Bird being strewn about here lately...

In re-reading this thread, The Incredibles got decidely mixed reviews -- whereas, now only the good reviewers seem to keep championing it.

As my review here shows, I was underwhelmed by Bird's work, as I was with Iron Giant -- both are merely good movies. It was not until this summer's Ratatouille that he truly burst out of his shell and hit one out of the park. I'll be eternally grateful for his gift of Ratatouille, but I just want to keep his legacy in perspective...

THREE F'S!!!

WHAT THE HELL!!!

This is by far the best Pixar film I have seen.

B+

*Thinks* My...3rd favorite Pixar film, behind Finding Nemo and Toy Story. Haven't seen Ratatouille yet though.

Not really anything to complain about, it's simply a very solid animated film, well, film in general.

Loved it, Fantastic Four should have taken lessons from this one.

Best Pixar film since the Toy Storys

4 Fs, huh?


I wonder how pathetic of a lowlife you have to be to get a kick out of giving a film like this an F.

My third favorite Pixar flick, just a tiny bit behind the underrated A Bug's Life. Its (too) open moralism about the concept of family is the only flaw I've seen in it.
A(-)

Hooray! Another A Bug's Life fan!!!

Now that several people have had a chance to read Watchmen, I hope some of the links between The Incredibles and the graphic novel are more apparent.

One of the more obvious is Edna Mode's "no cape" shtick, which is, to me at least, a clear nod to Ellis' biography, where he mentions that one of the superheroes was shot dead because his cape got stuck in a revolving door while he was chasing a criminal. The irony is that the superhero did not want the cape, but that the PR team insisted on it because it looked good. Edna, the designer, is the one who rejects the cape idea while Bob wants it.

More subtly though importantly, both works concentrate on the post-heroic phase of the heroes' existence, even as the heroes are on the verge of their return to heroic activity. There is a profound sense of longing and nostalgia that imbues both works, which readily allows for the immense amount of self- and cultural referentiality that is so amply evident in both.

Where The Incredibles and Watchmen differ is on the world the heroes inhabit. The setting in The Incredibles is suburbia, in all its mundane glory, an environment so stifling that the heroes cannot function properly in it and therefore re-locate to a mysterious island where the conventional heroic narrative can find an easy home. In the case of Watchmen, the setting is the heroically fertile pre-apocalyptic city where the heroism, arrested by self-reference, is momentarily resurrected only to be disavowed.

One gets the sense that Bob and Helen Parr are the descendants of Dan Dreiberg and Laurie Juspeczyk.

Yeah, poor Dollar Bill.

There's also Ozymandias' monologuing.

My second favorite Pixar movie, following WALL-E. Even many, many repeat viewings later, it still hasn't gotten old.

A

HOLLIS. omfg, how could I not remember? It's not Ellis I'm horrible with names. Forgive me, please.

not Pixar's best work, but probably their most entertaining. Brad Bird really knows how to do chases.

A-

Brad Bird makes the best Pixar movies. This was by far the most mature film Pixar had released at the time, and it was just spectacular. I disagree that it wasn't funny. Edna Mode cracks me up. And the characters were all very good and fleshed out. My second favorite after Ratatouille.

A+

I loved the movie but its not my favorite of Pixar movies. The first act was a little boring but once the action starts the story also kicks up into full gear. The overall story is GREAT but the final act could have used a bit more "teamwork" and action to make the "earlier deaths" look more meaningful (the self-learning robot is defeated by the same death...again). The family concepts are the best part of this movie and which is why this works SO WELL.

8/10

I still stand by that Shark's Tale is a more enjoyable movie than this.



better than anything in Incredibles. even if the animation is soooo laughably bad now.

You're a dumbass.

i'll take that over "white nuclear family spends an entire movie to prove their own superiority and elitism over everyone else"

Glad that's the message you got from it!

i am glad so thx!

Haha, sounds like you're a snowflake SJW!!

I just watched this for the first time in about ten years and was pretty blown away by it. The plot is pretty thin, but what really stands out is how visually appealing and kinetic it is. There's a dynamic visual in damn near every shot. I'm still not too terribly interested in watching the sequel but damn this was well executed

Still one of the finest examples of American Animation