An Incredible "Incredibles" Movie

[tabuno]

"The Incredibles" the new animated from "The Iron Giant" director and writer is a new landmark and the best animated feature to come out since "Spirited Away" three years ago. This new American animated feature is America's response to the Japanese style of "Spirited Away" in a family, comedy, action-thriller format that also puts James Bond movies to shame.

[cinemabon]

As I began to watch the latest three-dimensional rendering of the Pixar bunch, it occurred to me that they couldn’t have picked a more superlative title. What I was seeing was indeed, incredible. Everything about this film is incredible, from the introductory retro-flat look of the 1950’s to the updated look of a late 1960’s suburbia. These cartoons are now so realistic, they run the risk of replacing the two dimensional variety. Further, I believe that three-dimensional rendering has such an impact on the viewer’s eye as to be surreal. That is, there is more information to assimilate than if it were drawn and painted. There is the detail of skin texture, the glistening surface of a moist eye, the reflective nature of water in motion, and the fact they are all represented with stark realism.

While a film like “Final Fantasy” attempted to recreate a sort of realistic world, “The Incredibles” doesn’t try to attempt that. Instead, they make fun of the fact everything is so realistic and take it a step further. They ask the question we’ve all wondered: What do super-heroes do when the caper is over and they have to go back to being normal again?

The answer is probably one of the greatest scripts written for an animated film. The repartee is genuine, the situation all too real, and the comedy does not come off forced but applicable to the situation. In truth, we don’t know how “The Incredibles” will end. We know it is a movie and finite. But unlike other animated films of the past, the dangers are real, and we fear something ‘could’ happen to these characters we grow quickly fond of, regardless of whether it may happen. The mother even tells her children in one crucial scene; “This is not like the TV shows on Saturday mornings. The bad guys won’t bother to use restraint. They will try to kill you.” This movie grabs you from the start and refuses to let the audience go, taking us on a whirlwind ride of possibilities that results in an overwhelming assault of fantastic images.

There is also a great homage here to Ken Adams. Adams is the famous Academy Award winning set designer of all those large and fantastic sets for the Bond pictures. What starts out as a family picture quickly becomes a super-spy adventure story. There is even a ‘spy’ score thrown in for good measure. We have the Matt Helm monorail, the Ken Adams volcano (“You Only Live Twice”), and the spy car full of gadgets (“Goldfinger”) with the now cliched ejector seat, used here for comic purposes. There is less of Superman and more of every man in this picture, right down to the costume designer for the super heroes who very curiously resembles Edith Head, and that suits me just fine (pun intended).

There is a new hero in cartoon-town and it looks like “The Incredibles” should be around for a long time to come.

[tabuno]

Somehow cinemabon puts flesh onto my own commentary...he explains what I wanted to say...he has really entered the soul of movie magic and comprehension and pulled out the truth of this movie that I could only provide superficial impressions.