The Incredibles

The Incredibles is completely FANTASTIC!!! Even better than we thought it would be, and we had high expectations. Brilliant on every level. First, technically. With the improvements in animation technology, other studios are not as far behind Pixar as they used to be. So the technical achievments of The Incredibles will not blow your mind as much as, say, A Bug's Life did when it came out. The major advance in The Incredibles is the hair. On the male characters it still isn't perfect (short hair is really hard to get right because you can usually see some scalp showing through that you wouldn't in real life), but on the females it is AWESOME. You MUST see this movie in the theater, the greatness of the hair doesn't come through on the tv screen.

Pixar has also improved the movements on their people models, the motions look more natural. It's still not perfect (this is probably the hardest thing to get perfect in 3d and nobody has achieved it yet). But there are some perfect little moments, like at one point the mother is on the phone and pushes a lock of hair behind her ear and it is just right.

Another reason to see The Incredibles in the theater: the scene layouts and the color schemes. Lots of absolutely great, epic screen compositions. Some striking similarities to Sky Captain, in the city designs and the tropical island theme. Unlike Dreamworks, neither Pixar nor the folks behind Sky Captain seem like the type to plagiarize, so probably the similarites are due to using the same 1930s design influences. The color schemes in The Incredibles are genius. Could not be improved upon, the best of any Pixar movie yet. We're can't wait to see pastel "color script" drawings in The Art of the Incredibles book. (Damn you Amazon for not having a Look Inside for this book!)

As amazing as The Incredibles is technically, the script was even better. First, it was hilarious, the costume designer character in particular. Second, the character development was amazing. The family relationships are perfect. The way each character feels and reacts to things is so right. And most brilliant was the way the character traits were incorporated into each individual's superpowers, and even their feelings about being superheros. As much as we love Pixar, we have noticed that their movies were starting to fall into a rut: for each theme (toys, bugs, monsters, fish) the gimmick was that being toys or whatever was the characters' jobs and the setup would involve all these human workplace analogies. We were afraid The Incredibles would do the same thing, but thankfully it doesn't. The film goes much deeper. So much deeper that after a while we started to worry that it would be over kids' heads. But the children in the theater were engrossed the whole time. If you have a little boy, he will LOVE Dash, who is just the typical hyper little boy. Pixar is giving a huge gift to parents because when the DVD comes out, this is one movie that you will actually WANT to watch a gazillion times in a row.

We are so happy for Brad Bird, the director of The Incredibles, whose Iron Giant was critically acclaimed but commercially unsuccessful. He deserves every ounce of vindication and success that The Incredibles will bring.