Review: The Incredibles

(I'm finally getting around to writing about this one, even though we had the DVD the day it came out...)

While I really liked this movie, I am a superhero comic geek that got all the inside jokes. It plays on the medium of the superhero story very well. The rest of my family, wife and two kids (2 and 10), didn't like it as much. I could tell the kids were getting bored. This is not as good as the fabulous Monsters Inc or Toy Story 1 or 2 or Bug's Life or Finding Nemo. It is good, but it is just a step below, only because I knew the genre. (I still think they missed out on a couple of good jokes...I still think that Elasti-girl, after being all stretched out, while she was looking in the mirror could have said something hilarious about stretch marks).

To be honest, they brought this up a level. It is not little kid humor and it wasn't just trying to be cute. My two-year-old doesn't like this movie anywhere near as much as the others. My ten-year-old loves it. My wife didn't like it. It was kind of dark in places, and in a way, it was better than most super-hero movies or cartoons.

I think that I "got it" because I know comics and superheroes so well. The premise of banning superheroes is wonderful to me but alien to my wife. The premise of hiding super-powers in a family setting was wonderful from a comic geek's standpoint of always making fun of Clark Kent looking just like Superman but with glasses (come on, you remember wondering how no one could ever tell the difference...for years I thought Lois Lane was just plain blind). Really, I think some of this is geek-boy stuff. But good geek-boy stuff.

So I am on the fence about this one. Personally, I thought it was wonderful. The story, characters, animation, were all top-notch. Others may not like this one. It would be interesting to examine the background of people who saw this movie. I bet liking it depends on what they've read and seen in the past.

Even though it doesn't compare to some of their other movies (I'm sorry, but Monsters Inc, Toy Story, Toy Story 2, and Finding Nemo are just simply brilliant in every respect), Pixar has a winner. But it doesn't have to compare. The Incredibles is incredible in its own right.