The Incredibles

I found this a bit disappointing, especially given the host of rave reviews it got when it came out.

It's very inventive and imaginative. It's visually stunning. The characters are wonderfully subtle in their visual rendering. There are some laugh out loud moments. And the extended chase sequence with Dash (the superfast kid) is truly astonishing in its conceptualisation and execution.

The visual rendering of the whole film is incredibly detailed, nuanced and convincing, and, by the end, you forget that this is all computer animation -- that's a heck of an achievement, to create such a authentic, kinetically convincing, and fully realised environment, at high speed, and with multiple perspectives. Awesome, in a way.

But...it doesn't feel like it's got much of a soul. The wonderful thing about the Toy Story films (in my opinion) is that, in addition to their technical brilliance and their capacity for being enjoyed by all kinds of ages, they allude to some serious and profound issues: ageing, change, the inevitability of things coming to an end -- all in charming, moving, and subtle ways. These emotional truths are played out naturally, and integrated into the rest of the action. In The Incredibles, the 'emotional' moments are like little packages, inserted artificially into the structure. Modules of sweetness.

The Incredibles has all of the technical brilliance -- and it looks really, really beautiful -- but it's a bit hollow, I think. It's superficial, like the Bond films that it pays homage to (even in the music, where the distinctive 'fat trumpet' sound from the John Barry theme recurs, and the swirling high strings track the motion).

The spectacle is magnificent, but there's not enough beneath the sheen of the surfaces, the dynamic action, and the pyrotechnics. Masses of flash, but no resonance.

No cigar, despite the sumptuous, scintillating visuals.