s The Incredibles the best computer graphics movie yet made? No.

Was it pretty damn good and does it get better every time I think about how smart and genre-defying it's writing and plot were? Yes.

Was it better than most other CG movies, and almost all action or superhero movies? Damn straight. And yet when I think back on the film, I'm rather emotionless about it all.

This review contains some oblique spoilers, though if you've seen any of the trailers or read any reviews you know most of the story already, and if you don't see the ending coming by the 30th minute you must not see too many formulaic superhero/adventure type movies.

Scores:

The Incredibles
Script/Story: 8
Acting/Casting: 8
Action: 7
Humor: 7
Eye Candy: 9
Fun Factor: 7
Replayability: 7
Overall: 8

I'm a bit surprised at my overall score, since I left the theater thinking this one was more like a 7 or 7.5 at best. I enjoyed it, but I wasn't overwhelmed, and I was a bit disappointed by some of the action scenes, if only because the reviews and advance word I'd heard had been so glowing.  As always with movies, it's all about your expectations going in, and since I had high expectations and hoped this one would be great, it's no real surprise that it was a bit of a let down.

With this review I'm at a loss about what to write. Almost everyone likes the movie a great deal. It's at 97% on Rotten Tomatoes, with 158/163 critics giving it a thumbs up, and most of them raving about it. And when I read the positive reviews, I agree with almost everything they say... and yet I just didn't like it as much as they did. It was very well done, had funny moments and lines, intelligent action and dialogue, good characters, etc. When I think back about it I remember all the good parts, and yet... I don't feel any emotion towards it. I guess my main problem was that I didn't really care who won. I didn't love the good guys or hate the bad guy; I just enjoyed watching them all do their thing, and didn't really feel like I had a dog in the race. Plus, when you get down to it, this was a typical Hollywood product, and in such films the good guys always win. Especially when it's a kids' movie. There might be a dead parent, and in fact there usually is in a Disney movie, but that usually happens early on to set up the story of the struggling orphan.

Thankfully The Incredibles didn't sink to that level to twist our emotions and force us to root for the poor nearly-killed child, and in fact it's remarkably un-sentimental in that way.  Perhaps too unsentimental, since I never really cared who won or lost, nor did I have any real doubt as to who would win or lose, or how the bad guy would meet his ultimate end.

In an effort to get more in touch with my discontent, I'll run down the five (and only five) negative reviews now listed on RT. Obviously this isn't a negative review, but since I agree without passion with most everything the raving reviewers say, I might as well see if I differ from the bad reviews.

¤ The first one is by Jessica Winter of the Village Voice. There's nothing so common as a review score listed, but it has a splat on RT, and it's clearly a negative review. Unfortunately there's not much there for me to agree with. The critic is cranky that Pixar put action into an action movie about superheroes, and would apparently have appreciated a small character drama more.  As if Finding Nemo and both Toy Story movies weren't largely action/chase films; just ones set in a place where flying machines and explosions weren't options?

At the preview screening, a little boy burst into tears a few ammo rounds into an early auto chase, and the five-year-old to my left spent most of two hours cowering in her dad's lap. Pixar has never tiptoed around the young 'uns' fears and anxieties (see the nighttime terrors of Monsters, Inc. or the family-slaughter overture of Finding Nemo), but The Incredibles announces the studio's arrival in the vast yet overcrowded Hollywood lot of eardrum-bashing, metal-crunching action sludge.

Basically, she's unhappy that this PG-rated movie isn't 100% acceptable for babies to watch. Sorry they didn't make another film that 3 year olds could watch without a care in the world, Jessica.  But it would help if you reviewed the film you saw, rather than talking about the movie you wish they'd made instead.

¤ Next up we've got a review by Sean O'Connell of Eclipse Magazine. Since the score given is a B- it's debatable if this one is even a splat, as RT has it classified. Nevertheless, this critic's entire review makes the same point about four different times; it's just another superhero movie, in the mold of Spider-Man, the X-men, etc. And I can't really argue that, except that I liked The Incredibles far more than Spider-Man 1, or X-men 1 or 2 (I didn't see Spidey 2, so can't comment.) mostly since The Incredibles had such a smarter plot and such more interesting and realistic characters. My major complaint about both X-men movies was that the action was just dumb; hardly any of the characters used their powers in intelligent ways, and the humans reacted to their powers stupidly, as required by the plot. That's one of the things I liked best about The Incredibles; that the super powers were almost always used wisely, and when the superheroes teamed up they complimented each other's abilities nicely. It wasn't all "cops shoot Wolverine for standing there with a blade sticking out of his hand, then stand motionless while Pyro shoots slow fireballs at them for five minutes."

¤ The next negative review is by Eleanor Gillespie and is posted on Access Atlanta, and their website forced me to waste 30 seconds of my life typing fake information into their registration menu in order to access their no-doubt invaluable site content.  So you better appreciate my Herculean effort to read this review in the interest of completeness!  Elly's amateurish review *cough* summarizes the plot for the first five paragraphs, and then finally gets to her opinions in the last four. Here's paragraph 6 and the first sentence of paragraph 7, which serves mostly to demonstrate that Access Atlanta lacks an editor, since it's clearly the concluding sentence to paragraph 6. Of course that would make paragraph 7 even more of a fragment, so you have to pick your grammatical errors.

We'll cut Elly a break though, since she was clearly stretching to even manage this much of a review, what with 55% of the review summarizing the plot, and every paragraph in it containing the bare minimum of words.

Like the Jetsons or the Flintstones, much of the film's humor juxtaposes normal domesticity -- the Incredibles' ranch house is hilarious, with its avocado kitchen and "modern" art -- with something different. A his-boy-Elroy future for George Jetson, Stone Age gags for Fred Flintstone and, for Mr. Incredible -- he's a guy who can crunch giant robots, but can't manage chores at home or his office job.

But in a feature-length movie, the joke quickly goes stale. And the animated special effects, while worthy of "Spider-Man" and "Return of the Jedi" (both of which are invoked in certain scenes), don't have the same thrill as the fishy stuff in "Nemo" or the nightmare factory in "Monsters, Inc."

"...the joke quickly goes stale." is an opinion, but in any event the movie only engages in that joke for the introduction, to build the characters, and then quickly abandons it for action and adventure, so I don't consider it a valid criticism.  I'll second her that the crazy chase action stuff was better in Monsters Inc. than in this film, but I thought The Incredibles far outdid Finding Nemo in that category. The seagull chase at the end was funny and wild, but the rest of the movie?  Not so much.

The review concludes with a by-now familiar refrain:

Bird and the Pixar whizzes do what they do excellently; you just wish they were doing something else. And if I want to see an old Bond movie, I'll rent one.

Maybe she's got kids and wanted another sweet little puff ball she could park them in front of without hearing a word of worry or protest? 

¤ The next review is our first real pan, and it's by Jeremy Heilman of the melodramatically-titled Movie Martyr.com site. He gives it a 15, but doesn't say out of what, so I had to check a few other pages on the site before I looked it up on the "all reviews by score page," and found it down in the 1 star group, alongside such cinematic gems as The Hunter, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, Men in Black 2, Spy Kids 3, and more.  Better yet, check out his "masterpiece" 4+ star rankings. If you've heard of more than 1/4 of those titles, you win a cookie. 

L'Amour Fou , The Ballad of Narayama , La Belle Noiseuse , Blood of a Poet , The Blue Angel , A Brighter Summer Day , Code Unknown , Cremaster 3...

The list goes on and on, with nothing you have ever or will ever hear of. Clearly we've stumbled onto a true movie connoisseur, one whose tastes are far too refined for peasants such as you or I to understand. And as such, he couldn't possibly enjoy populist tripe such as The Incredibles.  In fact, he doesn't even bother to review major films, for the most part. The only other Pixar movie I can find on his list is Monsters Inc., which got a 2-star score. There's no review for Shrek, or Shrek 2, or Shark's Tale, or any other CGI film I can think of, with the exception of Final Fantasy, which everyone else hated and he therefore gives a 4-star review to.

Anyway, getting back to his The Incredibles review... it's as out there as you might expect, given his obscure movie preferences. He hates the characters, hates the look, hates the action and explosions, but since that's not enough, he has to go deeper, to a Walter Chaw-esque level (Who loved The Incredibles, I might add.) and find...metaphor!

The super-powered Parr family responds to threats on its family unit with bloodthirsty, vigilante retaliation. A supposedly exhilarating scene features a young boy and girl harnessing their superpowers to kill humans (not robots, as is the norm in the genre) in a series of Bruckheimereque explosions. No film, live action or animated, that I can recall, features children murdering so cavalierly. This sequence culminates in a team kill from Mom and Dad, followed by a mutual declaration of love. The effect is appalling, and the message is made clear: the family that slays together stays together.

That's almost CAP Alerts-esque, in its intentional obliviousness to reality. The kids killed guards (not really, they mostly just dodged the guards who crashed into things)... who were firing hundreds of machine gun bullets at them. So what would be a better solution for the kids and parents? Give up and be captured? Stand still and be murdered?

He's just getting warmed up, though.

It’s rather deplorable to think that audiences are bringing their children en masse to absorb these skewed messages, but just because it’s inappropriate for kids I wouldn’t call The Incredibles a particularly mature animated film... Bird’s sloppy obliviousness to the imagery that he employs is worse than outright propaganda, because it has no purpose other than to exploit real life tragedy to sell inane fantasy to us. Watching this confused film in an audience filled with people who were clearly relishing every terror the film threw at them, I started to be filled with self-doubt, but each further explosion only further cemented my impression that the film was playing with a fire that soon flared out of control.

The whole film is some sort of metaphor about how America's might makes right in the post 9/11 world, to this reviewer. No, really. Go read the review if you don't believe me.  I may need to go research this guy some more; since there's plenty more space on my wacky movie reviewer page.

¤ The last negative review is the most flaccid of them all. It's by Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat of Spirituality and Health.  It's also three whole paragraphs long, of which the last two are plot summary. They give it a 2/5 score, and seem generally disapproving of the violence and action, in a reflexively squishy/liberal sort of way.

Just what we need at this moment in history -- another animation flick saluting superheroes and family values. Director Brad Bird was behind the courageous and imaginative 1999 animated feature "Iron Giant" that proclaimed the important message "Guns Kill." On this outing, his message seems to be tailored to the Bush era: "Once you become a superhero, you must stay the course at all costs and so you must find new occasions to keep the adrenalin pumping and the ego satisfied."

Yes, yes, of course it does. Because cartoon movies about entirely fictional superheroes with magical powers are exactly the same thing as real life, and if you hate Dubya enough, you can find a way to make anything an analogy to him, and damn it for that reason.

A worthless review, but it did serve one purpose. It got me to thinking, again, about what exactly one needs to do in order to get their reviews listed on Rotten Tomatoes. And to maybe get free movie passes in the process. After all, if this pointless, 355-word splat is sufficient to be ranked and linked, why the hell aren't my 50x longer, far more thoughtful reviews good enough? (Nevermind the fact that mine might well be a bit too much longer...)

I've looked around RT for their requirements in the past, but never went any further than skimming down their Article Submission page. Looking at it more closely, it seems that you must sign up with the RT submission form and be approved, and to be approved you must belong to one of the certified critics societies, or else have a press credential of some sort, earned by actually writing and posting reviews in a newspaper or periodical. I'm not going to try and get a job with some online or real world review publication that would give me deadlines, require me to review things I don't want to see, limit my review length and focus greatly, and force me to write my reviews in an entirely different format. Fortunately, one of the accepted groups is the Online Film Critics Society, a group that seems to be more than loosely-affiliated with Rotten Tomatoes. Look where their site is hosted, for instance.

The OFCS lists about 200 members, all of them online, many of them running their own sites, and only a few of them commercial, name-brand reviewers. The OFCS About Page lists the requirements to become a member, and they're not too harsh, but are also very open to interpretation:

Writers who wish to apply must maintain an annual online publication quota of at least 50 professional-level reviews, no less than 400 words per review, in order to be eligible for consideration. The current membership standards (as outlined by the OFCS Governing Committee) include the following criteria:

• Reviews, articles, and the web site should be of a professional level quality. (Roughly 40%)
• Reviews, and articles should be comprehensive, or ones that fill an under-served niche. (Roughly 30%)
• The member should offer meaningful contributions to film criticism and the OFCS. (Roughly 20%)
• The member's written work or web site should have outstanding features. (Roughly 10%)

I'd like to think they'd read my reviews and see that they were different but valid and hit upon details most critics didn't. Tragically it would probably hinge on the same thing that most important real life events hinge upon... who you know. And since I don't know any current members to give me a recommendation, I'd probably be ignored and rejected like every other troll out there babbling on about movies and trying to get in the group to score free tickets. And since I am another troll out there babbling about movies to try and get free tickets... their decision might have some merit.

Nevertheless, I'll probably try and get another couple of dozen reviews online before 2005, and fix things up on this site: finish formatting the old reviews over to the new style, redo the reviews index page to put all the movie reviews on the same page, add a listing with them sorted by score as well as name, etc. That way even after they reject my membership application at least I'll have improved my site content, for the great benefit of the several hundred people who read the main page, hardly ever click on any of the links to subpage content, and who would all prefer me to stop blogging for six months and just finish my damn fantasy novel already.

As for The Incredibles, I think I need to see it again to really form an opinion. It was gorgeous on the eyes, it didn't bore me, it had a lot of clever stuff, and it was far smarter than most action movies. Despite all of that, I didn't feel any real emotional attachment to the characters and I didn't care if the good guys won, so I mostly sat back and enjoyed the scenery without really caring where the ride was taking me.  Unfortunately, there's no way I'm going to see it in the theaters again, and I'll almost certainly forget all about it by next summer, when the movie comes out on DVD.

Boundin'

If you've seen The Incredibles, you'll know what Boundin' is. And if you haven't, trust me, there's no reason to go to see The Incredibles just to catch this immediately forgettable short Pixar film before it. You can see some shots and a preview of Boundin' on the Pixar site, but trust me again... it looks far better than it is. In fact, the look of it was the best part, and I didn't really think it looked that good. It was very Toy Story-esque in appearance; all sharp angles and bright colors, and while pretty, it didn't look "real" in any way. It looked like really detailed CGI.

That's fine though; lots of CGI looks that way. Toy Story, for instance, as I just mentioned. The problem with Boundin' wasn't the look, it was the characters and plot. I'm reviewing it from an adult perspective though, and since I think it was made on about a 5 y/o level, where pretty colors and funny-looking characters and silly songs are more than enough for quality entertainment. As an adult though, I found it pretty damn boring. And what sort of moral message was imparted anyway? The sheep loves his pretty coat, he gets sheared, he's depressed, and a jackalope shows up and tells him he can get over his blues by "boundin'" around. I.E. leaping and bouncing up and down as though all the world was his trampoline. And sure enough, it is, once he starts leaping.

Which is fine for Mr. Sheep, whose coat will soon grow back in and who is just a bouncy cartoon animal anyway... but what about the rest of us? So when bad things happen we're to cheer ourselves up by bouncing around mindlessly? That'll really keep the bank from foreclosing on your home, eh?

Not to overanalyze, and I didn't expect a solid life lesson from the short, but I had hopes it would be at least briefly-entertaining. Instead, Malaya and me were bored, and wanted it to end so the movie could start. My take on Boundin' was that it was some head Pixar guy's pet project, and that he was convinced the dancing sheep was comedy gold, and the rambling narration by the country-sounding guy was flawless, and that everyone would leave the theater humming the Boundin' tune.  Maybe next time.

Also, seeing the Cars teaser trailer on the big screen really drove home how utterly pointless it is. It's anthropomorphized cars driving around a race track, with a ridiculously stereotyped redneck pickup truck and his sports car friend. Aside from a few laughing children, our theater full of eager The Incredibles viewers responded with deadly, slightly-dismayed, silence. And I can guarantee you that that would not have happened with any other Pixar teaser short ever.

Maybe the movie itself will be brilliant, and maybe that annoying country yokel pickup truck won't be the main character in the movie... but if the movie is anything like the teaser, this may be Pixar's first painful misstep. At least with adults; as various recent films have proven, kids will happily sit through almost any brightly-colored CGI with cartoon characters, and though that may change as more and more crappy CGI films are released, it's not likely to change by next November, when Cars is due to be released.

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