The Incredibles 2

7/2/2018

A-
3.53

A family of superheroes goes on a PR campaign to lift the ban on their public existence.

Directed by Brad Bird
Starring Craig T. Nelson and Holly Hunter
Initial Review by Phil Crone

After 14 long years and sequels to “Toy Story (fine),” “Finding Nemo (sure),” “Monsters Inc. (ehh…)”, and a double-dose of “Cars (WHAT?!),” Pixar finally gives us the one movie that actually went out of its way to set up a sequel in “Incredibles 2.” The original, “The Incredibles,” holds up today as one of Pixar’s less-weighty and joyful movies in their catalog. Did the sequel do the same? Indeed it did, and maybe a little too closely.

Let’s get the obvious knock, and only knock in my opinion, out of the way: considering it took 14 years to get a sequel, you would think the story would be a bit more original. “Incredibles 2” is a beat-for-beat retelling of the original story with a gender swap. That’s fine. If “The Incredibles” didn’t exist, “Incredibles 2” would be an A+ in my book.

So while “Incredibles 2” isn’t necessarily breaking any molds, I did love how it presented its story, starting with Elastigirl aka Helen Parr. “The Incredibles” paints her as the real leader of the group – Mr. Incredible gets the accolades, but it’s Elastigirl who incites the action to save Bob and she’s ultimately the one who devises the plan to stop Syndrome when she takes her one shot. This is Elastigirl’s movie, and it’s awesome to see Helen relish the spotlight after what was surely decades languishing in the shadow of her counterparts. Not only is Elastigirl uber-competent, her powers make her simply more fun to watch, as made evident by the excellent train sequence mid-way through the movie.

Meanwhile, we see Bob get to play the domestic caretaker role, which provides plenty of comedy to the affair. It’s definitely a cliché to see the bumbling man who can’t take care of the house, but screw it, it’s funny in this case. It was the only option to give Violet and Dash any sort of character arc in this movie, and the three of them working to learn how to be a family without their real leader provides some moments that are funny and touching – specifically Bob breaking down and wishing to be a good dad later in the movie.

In all this chaos, we get the real scene-stealer of the movie, Jack Jack. Still a baby, there’s only so much interesting you can do with Jack Jack other than comedy, and Pixar realizes that and leans into it heavily. There are a number of great scenes I could pick out, but how do you beat Jack Jack fighting the raccoon? That scene will almost assuredly make my favorite scenes of 2018 list that is currently… maybe three or four deep right now.

Not surprisingly, given the dynamic shift, Bob manages to fall into the same trap as Helen, taking them off the table and leaving it to the kids to save the day. In the final sequence, we see all the main characters get a “moment,” and it was great to see Bob finally learn that he didn’t have to be the center of attention and Helen to learn that her kids were self-sufficient without her as she is tasked with ultimately taking down The Screen Slaver. It was the right call and a great way to cap off everyone’s story here.

“Incredibles 2” may not have been wholly original, but it’s a more polished take on a winning formula that Pixar had already developed. Pixar leaned into the character’s strengths and made a movie that was just really fun beginning to end. What more can you ask for?

Grade: A

2 Comments

Jon

7/15/2018 10:16:46 am

For some reason, the Social tab of my Gmail account favorites tweets by James Woods. I have no idea why this is the case. Maybe my positive review of his work in Videodrome or Hercules found its way into the algorithm. One of these notifications led me to his disdain for a Slate article that wondered what was thematically happening in The Incredibles 2. He asserted it was just a cartoon, further marking him as the incurious and reactionary dummy that Google thinks I’m interested in. As previously stated here and on the podcast, there’s no such thing as ‘just a cartoon’ or that statement’s unspoken cousin, ‘just a kid’s movie.’ Every film has values and a philosophy and thoughts about the world, especially the sequel to a film that has been heralded and debated in the fourteen years since its release. No work that contains long discourses on women in the workplace and gender roles in parenting can be so readily dismissed as ‘just a cartoon.’ Whether The Incredibles 2 has something coherent and recognizable to say is a worthy question, but ‘why are people so concerned about this animated movie’ is not.

As our second Brad Bird film in recent MMC history, it’s worth thinking about what his output’s strengths are. He’s got three separate dials, one set for action virtuosity, one for affecting emotional climaxes, and a third for philosophizing on whatever is striking his fancy. Adrenal glands, heart, and brain. In something like Ratatouille, he’s got the heart dial turned up so high that it’s my favorite of his considerable cinematic sextet. His Mission Impossible film is all adrenaline, an action masterpiece that leaves the heart and the brain behind. The Iron Giant goes for all three, as does The Incredibles. The Incredibles 2, compared to the original, matches the action and the brains, but seems to be completely lacking in heart. Having not seen A Bug’s Life or any Cars movie, The Incredibles 2 is the first Pixar film that doesn’t, at a minimum, make me swallow the growing lump in my throat. That certainly doesn’t mean it’s bad, but it does mean that Bird is pulling back on a dial that he has proven himself adept at using.

If there’s an emotional letdown in Incredibles 2, that doesn’t mean the film isn’t stuffed with visceral pleasures. Another tweet in relation to Incredibles 2 posited the brilliant idea that Bird should direct a Superman movie, and his work here provides plenty of evidence of why that should be. The scale of this film is huge, as vehicles and buildings become unstoppable forces in need of superpowered immovable objects to slow them down. Bird is just as effective when he’s slamming fists into bodies as opposed to concrete into steel. The fights utilize new superpowers in unique ways. Elastigirl’s bike chase works exceptionally well alongside the film’s other setpieces. The Incredibles 2 bests its predecessor in two ways and the action is one of them.

The other is the humor in what is the funniest film of 2018 thus far. No offense to Wes Setnor, but my disinterest in anything baby-related was not allayed by a year spent in the same house with one. Two hours with Jack-Jack Parr, though, will change a person’s mind. The vast majority of the laughs are filtered through him, a recognizable baby who doesn’t mug for the camera and is always convincing as a character, even when he’s imitating Edna Mode because babies imitate. The raccoon fight is unimpeachable, as is squeezing lasers out of him when the Parrs gets a handle on what Jack-Jack can do. Some strong physical humor out of Violet’s discomfort around Tony Rydinger completes a package made better by seeing it in a packed theater.

7/15/2018 10:17:22 am

To return to the intro, what is it all trying to say? Lengthy for an animated film, The Incredibles 2 pads that time with elongated scenes of characters having discussions that probably are going well above the heads of the small children that Woods thinks is the sole audience. Bird’s got big ideas in three areas that don’t particularly overlap with each other. In the parenting sphere, he’s the strongest, especially in thinking about it through the lens of superheroes. Stuck at home while Helen goes to work, Bob is confronted with both an inability to brute-force his way through problems, as he does as Mr. Incredible, and with the never-ending flow of conflicts that make lasting victory unachievable, at least in any timeframe that’s shorter than years. Both realizations provide him with a complete and satisfying arc, but Helen is off in her own story. One expects some kind of unifying thread between what Bob and Helen experience, but it’s hard to divine it, if it even exists. She’s having Sheryl Sandberg-ian discussions with Evelyn Deavor about how women can succeed out in the world. Bird tries to bite off too much here, with grand talk about cynicism versus idealism, design versus marketing, revolution versus incrementalism.

As if that wasn’t enough, Bird adds political and sociological themes that swamp whatever The Incredibles 2 has on its clouded mind. Benevolent billionaires striking out into the world to make changes that politicians are too spineless to try. A surreptitious gun rights argument about defending yourself instead of relying on others to do so. Screenslaver’s critique of giving up freedom and privacy for convenience and comfort. This all comes so fast that even if Bird could address all these themes to completion, he eventually throws up his hands and refuses to engage with them further once they’ve been broached. It’s even difficult to reconcile this film with The Incredibles. That film took a Randian view of humanity, where the truly excellent shouldn’t be held back, and that seems like a philosophy that would cosign to Evelyn’s views of independence, self-reliance, and maturing past the point of needing superheroes/wishful thinking to save the day. Instead, the film ends with superheroes back on top, praised in public and ready to go back to work. It’s impossible to tie it all together.

If the biggest flaw in a film is that it aims too high, it’s doing something right. The Incredibles 2 has a long list of assets. In addition to the action and the comedy, the writing is a testament to structure-function pairs. Each of the Parr family is informed by their superpowers. Violet encases herself in barriers, Dash is impatient, Jack Jack lives in extremes, Helen’s agile, and Bob’s headstrong. It suggests that the characters were written first and then assigned a power, instead of the other way around. They display their strengths in an attractive world, a futuristic aesthetic imagined by someone from the 50’s. Dick Cavett’s still on the air, but his show is interrupted by mind control devices. The film also contains some great voice acting, none moreso than Craig T. Nelson as Bob. He has to hit so many emotions, and the animation matches every inflection and change in tone.

I’d put The Incredibles 2 in the lesser-Pixar box, but only because expectations are so high. Scale and action and laughs are to be expected from limitless animation, but bringing in emotional investment, like with all films, is what’s required to get to those upper echelons. The Incredibles 2 is something of a letdown when its predecessor so ably juggled its many strengths. Being the charming and irresistible younger sibling of an all-timer is what the sequel has to settle for. B+