Imaginative 'Incredibles' an instant animated classic

By Jack Garner
Gannett News Service

THE INCREDIBLES (PG) Three-and-a-Half Stars (Good-to-Excellent) A clever, witty, well-written animated adventure, with retired superheroes called back into action. Pixar's graphic design perfectly matches the concept. Craig T. Nelson and Holly Hunter are among the exemplary voice talent for writer-director Brad Bird. Disney, 115 minutes. Touchstone Pictures

That shouldn't happen with "The Incredibles."

You have to love a movie about out-of-work superheroes who have gone to seed, especially when they emerge out of retirement to save the world. You'll laugh as Mr. Incredible, Elastigirl and the other superheroes try to work out the rust of inactivity and regain their heroic stature as disaster threatens their world.

Don't misunderstand: "The Incredibles" is a visual stunner. A retro-'60s view of the future has inspired a vivid and uniquely designed world, and each of the characters is distinctive, well defined with individual human foibles and one-of-a-kind superhero talents. Without the sparkling script of writer-director Brad Bird, "The Incredibles" would only be a parade of posters and posturing.

In the prologue, we see the superheroes at work in their glory years, as Mr. Incredible (voiced by Craig T. Nelson) performs with super-human strength, Elastigirl (Holly Hunter) stretches her arms and legs to encircle crime, and Frozone (Samuel L. Jackson) spreads slippery ice under the feet of bad guys on the run.

However, when Mr. Incredible stops a guy from committing suicide, the superhero is sued for interfering with the guy's right to die. Other legal suits follow and the heyday of the superheroes is over. Ostracized by society, they're forced into a relocation program, given everyday identities and boring, everyday lives.

Fifteen years later, Mr. Incredible and Elastigirl are Bob and Helen Parr, parents of three children in dull suburbia. The three kids also have superpowers, which their parents must constantly curtail. Then a vengeful bad guy from the old days entraps the superheroes and forces them back into action. In the film's second half, which runs a bit long, the heroes share adventures equally inspired by Marvel and DC Comics and James Bond movies.

The superheroes prove they still have "it," and deserve the opportunity to save the world on a regular basis. More importantly, Mom and Dad Parr and their three kids learn the importance of sharing their adventures as a family.

The voice work is first rate, especially from Nelson, who strikes the perfect balance between Incredible's pomposity and insecurities, and Hunter, who oozes practicality and level-headedness. Each Pixar movie has offered a distinctive look, but "The Incredibles" seems especially different, bringing to life a flat, futuristic, comic book world that runs contrary to the more rounded creations of the earlier films. It is a design of straight lines, sharp angles, evocative shadows and poster board images — a perfect match for a pop culture tale that's both old-fashioned and newfangled.

Rated PG, with cartoon violence.

Unappreciated filmmaker finally gets his big break

Brad Bird, the man behind "The Incredibles," struggled for years to find his place in Hollywood before landing at Pixar. Ric Francis • Associated Press

It's a comic portrait of gifts denied, of society's penchant to penalize the unusual.

Parr's journey into mediocrity comprises the first sequences of the film that its writer-director, Brad Bird, devised, and it's hard not to see the metaphoric implications for any artist who has gone unappreciated, and for Bird in particular.

In his late 40s, Bird is one of those talents who almost got squashed by the Hollywood system. He knocked around for years, impressing some with his "Family Dog" episode of Steven Spielberg's "Amazing Stories," his work on "The Simpsons" (where he breathed life into Krusty the Clown), his little-seen but often admired animated film, 1999's "The Iron Giant."

He got fired from other jobs for being too opinionated, for pushing too hard to make films better. He spent a lot of time watching film projects wither. "I could always get on the runway, but various things would happen that are boring and typical in Hollywood," he says. "There's not a lot of courage in Hollywood and not a lot of vision."

Bird is speaking from the vantage point of someone who has narrowly escaped his fate.

Compelled to slow down for an interview, he's hunched over a table at the press room at Pixar, the computer animation studio that has begotten an unparalleled string of computer-generated hits, such as "Toy Story," "Monsters, Inc." and "Finding Nemo."

For Bird, it's even more than animation — it's storytelling itself. He's consciously trying to tone down his famously opinionated mouth, but his message still sounds urgent. "Everybody is going, 'What is the magical, mysterious trick that Pixar is doing?' " says the director. He's referring to the awe in which Hollywood holds Pixar; after its public squabble with corporate partner Walt Disney Co., the company has been courted by every studio in town. "There must be some secret formula in a vault somewhere that they're all drinking.

"The basic thing is the people here love movies. ... They make films they themselves would want to see. I don't think a lot of people want to hear that, because there's no way they can just magically make that appear."

Pixar's creative chief, John Lasseter, a college friend of Bird's brought him to the company. "I always felt Brad Bird was a thoroughbred race horse attached to a very heavy plow," says Pixar's creative chief John Lasseter, a college friend of Bird's who brought him to the company. "We were able to unhook him and let him run in a big beautiful field. ... He was like, 'Oh, Pixar is great. When are the executives coming to squash my idea?' We kept saying, 'Go, go, go,' and all of a sudden that horse is running faster than he's ever gone." Run he did.

From left, Violet, Dash, Mr. Incredible and Elastigirl are "The Incredibles," a family of derring-do superheroes, in the new Pixar film. Touchstone Pictures

Set in a retro-futuristic world much like Disneyland's World of Tomorrow, "The Incredibles" is the story of how an aging superhero rediscovers his heroics, and the strength of family. After Mr. Incredible is kidnapped on the Island of Nemoanism, by Syndrome, a one-time fan turned nemesis, Helen Parr (aka Mrs. Incredible, aka the former superhero known as Elastigirl) flies to the rescue along with two of her children, Violet and Dash, who possess their own distinctive superpowers.

Like any normal family, they bicker and, at the beginning, Mr. Incredible is pining for his glory days, oblivious to the joys of his family. Mr. Incredible's ambivalence was the genesis of the film, the idea for which Bird first hatched 12 years ago or so, when his middle son, Jack (the baby in the film is Jack Jack), was an infant.

He was working on "The Simpsons" at the time and fretting that he'd never get to direct a movie. "I wanted work that I was fully invested in, and I wanted to be fully invested in my family. And I was worried that having not made it at that point I would never make it. If I was truly a good father, I would never be able to dedicate the time necessary to break through," he recalls.

"And I felt like I was at a crossroads where I was either going to be a lousy filmmaker or a lousy dad. And I didn't want to be that either. The film came out of that anxiety of, you know, wanting to do what you love and also wanting to give your family all that it's due."

Bird is undoubtedly ambitious. For instance, "The Incredibles" features more than 100 background sets, while "Finding Nemo" has only 20. Yet he wanted to make sure that the price tag remained $145 million, about the cost of the other Pixar films.

Besides writing and directing, the director also acts in the film. He plays Edna Mode, the diminutive, half Japanese, half German designer of superhero costumes. Part Coco Chanel, part weapons designer, she's a genial autocrat. Self-doubt is not in her emotional repertoire.

"(Bird's) a little like Edna in that way," says "Incredibles" producer John Walker, who also worked with Bird on "The Iron Giant." "He's very confident about what he wants to do. He has a very clear picture in his head of the entire movie and he expresses that. 'This is what I want.' And if somebody comes up with something better, he is happy to change. But it's not sort of open for discussion."