The Incredibles (2004)

Originally Reviewed

Saturday June 4, 2005

As I've said many times before I'm not a big fan of these Pixar movies, to me they are simply hyped up 3D CGI cartoons. While for the most part they're great quality entertainment for the kids, and adults who like cartoons, they simply aren't my flavor of film. Still every once in a while I give one a shot and The Incredibles is slightly unique, it actually has human characters instead of bugs, monsters or toys.

The Incredibles is about a group of retired superheroes who used to be out in the world fighting crime until the people started suing them and forced them to go into hiding. The main hero is Mr. Incredible who has a #1 fan named Buddy that follows him around and screws everything up. Mr. Incredible tells him to get lost after Buddy foils his capture of a villain, and in turn causes a train wreck, leading to everyone on the train to sue him. This starts the chain reaction that leads all the heroes into hiding.

Fifteen years later Mr. Incredible is an insurance salesman married to Elastic Girl with three kids, Dash, Violet and Jack Jack. One day he gets a call to reprise his superhero role and quickly accepts, but what he doesn't know is that he has been called by Buddy. The little kid has grown up and is now a villain; he has killed all the superheroes and now wants to take out Mr. Incredible. He has created a robot and plans to set it loose on the city, then arrive and save the day making everyone think he is a superhero, only it all goes wrong and he is unable to control the robot and Mr. Incredible and his family must save the day!

The graphics in this film were nothing short of "incredible", everything looked very life like, especially the scenery and the water. The story was very well written and the voice acting was very good. My biggest complaint is that the characters weren't incredibly original. It's very easy to match up the characters with their modern day comic book counterparts. Dash (who can run really fast), pretty similar to The Flash, then you have Elastic Girl and Violet (Invisible Girl) both like two of the members of the Fantastic Four, even Samuel L. Jackson’s character was a Silver Surfer rip off!

Overall, while not a big animation fan and the fact that the characters weren't very original, The Incredibles was pretty enjoyable and kids will surely love it, that’s what counts. I would love to see Pixar do a more adult type film like a Spider-man or Batman, that would be interesting to see.

8/10