The Incredibles
I thought this was B quality when I wrote the quick flick last week, then I saw it again the other day and realized I was being niggardly with the grade, so I've upgraded it to A-. Since flip-flopping is in fashion these days, or was until Election Day showed its limitations, I throw myself on your mercy for having flip-flopped with a grade.
"The Incredibles" grew in my estimation with viewing it, noticing little side jokes I failed to glom to earlier, observing how costuming and settings are even more gorgeous than when I first saw it, and comprehending that this is not just an exceptionally funny, well-wrought animated tale of virtue besting greed, jealousy and evil; it's also a morality play about the tendency of demoralized societies to settle for mediocrity and become antsy at best, vindictive at worst, about superiority. Our national illusion is manifested in inanities like "no child can be left behind," as if all children can, in fact, learn, and other baby talk that flows with the same thoughtless fluidity as does much of what our pandering leaders tend to say. "The Incredibles" is the kind of world that a fly speck like Denmark has become: one in which superiority is disdained, conformity and the humdrum is regarded as national spirit, and being demonstrably a harder worker or a greater achiever is considered bad form.
In the world of this movie, superhumans have become tiresome to the populace. When a society requires a superhero protection program for the superior ones among us, thoughts of Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" leap to mind. The self-adoring Garrison Keillor's smugly wry "Prairie Home Companion" has its Lake Woebegone, where all the children are above average, meaning they're all quite average indeed, an inflation of expectations like grades at places besotted by their own wonderfulness, such as Harvard, which expunge the reality of differentness, of better and worse.
The Parr parents (Craig T. Nelson, Holly Hunter), and their three kids, have had to tuck their wonderfulness into the cupboard and pretend to be ordinary. Bob Parr, once Mr. Incredible, has bloated out, and the Mrs., once Elastigirl, hides her flexibility from the goyim, so to speak, and the kids have to abjure their powers, like Clark Kent in "Smallville" when playing sports. But when a vile little wannabe who calls himself Syndrome (Jason Lee), and who only wanted, as nerdy jerk Buddy Pine, to tag along with Mr. Incredible but was rebuffed, sets out to show 'em, to be all that he can be in the world of super abilities, he sets off on a path of evil. Mr. Incredible, as Bob Parr, and his buddy, Lucius, in super-guise as Frozone (Samuel L. Jackson), can only do fly-by acts of super-heroism, so their frustration festers. Then, at last, focusing on the dangers Syndrome poses - he'll so undermine super-heroism that everyone will be super, meaning none will be - we're back to a Pixar-ish Denmark, the good guys must act.
Edna Mode (Brad Bird, the director, with a feminized voice) is the couturier who fashions new outfits for our out-of-shape heroes - what won't a life of mediocrity do to the midsection! - and revs up their engines of commitment. The battles between good and evil are hysterical, even if when the film rounds the bend, things reduce to the expectable frenzy of end-of-film confrontations and the film loses muscle as it gains razzle-dazzle. Nice to see that as some animated films tank, and others, good ones, like "Shark Tale," don't do so well, owing to the lack of interest too much of a good thing can bring, these well-wrought animated items must continually rev up those old traditional attributes like clever screenplays, ingenious word games, the occasional pun and the two-level approach to humor: slapstick for the moppets, something more meaty to chew on for the adults.
If you need a second viewing, as I did, that might be a good sign, that some of us took it for granted the first time - hey, nice movie - and required another shot of it to see how enveloped in a philosophy of, maybe we can call it, compassionate Nietzcheanism. Anyone for whom the words "all people are not identical, not equally worthy, not capable of the same achievement" chokes in the mouth will either dislike the movie or not get it. The fantasy of identical merit in all folks is lunatic, if acted upon it is a prescription for national mediocrity. Look at Old Europe's tumble so rapidly from a repository of civilization into grumpy left-behinds imagining they amount to something and that sneering at cowboy America is the same as achieving anything other than envy on a platter of, oh, snails.