CRS
Chandler, Arizona, United States

There's an old saying. If you don't want someone to join a crowd, you ask them, "If everyone were jumping off of a cliff, would you?" Well, I have. So my answer would be "Yes". True story.
Profile continued . . .

ARCHIVES!
Review of The Incredibles

Tuesday, June 14, 2005

this entry done by foo fighters, "doll"

ordinarily i reserve full reviews for movies that i've seen in the theater only, and the dvd movies i post on polarities. but while writing this one it started getting so long i decided to make an exception.




I can imagine the premiere showing of The Incredibles, the press left knowing this would be the easiest write-up in the world. You could see what the one-word synopsis at the beginning of the review would be just by watching the trailer. "Incredible!" it would say. You wouldn't really need to see the movie to write the review. It's Pixar. You know the movie is going to be incredible.

I'm convinced, like anyone interested in the movie industry, that Pixar is incapable of making a bad movie. Even it's worst (A Bug's Life, which ended up being not as good as Dreamworks' Antz), Pixar's movies are still better than just about everything else, even including non-family movies. But what makes their best movies (Toy Story, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles) stand taller than their already impressive pedigree is how deep beyond the surface they go. Any family movie worth its beans should be much more than skin deep-- that's half the point of family movies in general. Kids dig the silly stuff, adults like the deep stuff, knowing that it will stick in the back of their kids' minds, knowing that it will be there as they grow up. Pixar's movies, however, seem to be gleefully made specifically for adults, but animated and directed with kids in mind. Finding Nemo and Incredibles are so deep that you know for sure that there are a few dozen film students who will write their thesis on them.

The Incredibles does the family dynamic even better than the Fantastic Four comic, which is so obvious an inspiration one could be surprised Marvel hasn't sued. The main character for the first half is Mr. Incredible, the father, yet the movie smartly eschews focusing on fatherhood as a theme (that was done excellently in Finding Nemo and would be a retread here) and instead focuses on his role as a husband in a very poignant, spot-on way. The last half of the movies focuses on Elastigirl, the mother, and her role in motherhood, and this dynamic of relying on the husband to tell the story, then switching off to the wife and kids is not only interesting storytelling, but also allows the characters to breathe and develop. Also, the movie is long (just shy of two hours, which is unheard of for an animated movie), but it's paced so perfectly that you're on the edge of your seat once the action starts early on and barely lets up. In fact, The Incredibles, ostensibly a family film, has more action and is far more spectacular than any of, say, the Matrix films.

I hate to whip out the most obvious description of the movie as possible, because that's just lazy writing, but I have to say it. The Incredibles is, well, incredible.
-----



with love from CRS @ 8:47 PM 

0 Comments:

Post a Comment