The passables

Noel Vera

Brad Bird's "The Incredibles," his first film with Pixar, is an
eclectic mish-mash of pop-culture influences, from Alan Moore's
unsettling "Watchmen" graphic novel to the soap-opera plotlines
of "The Fantastic Four" (so how is the upcoming live-action movie
version going to cope?) to the gigantic sets Ken Adams designed for
the larger-than-life James Bond flicks ("You Only Live Twice" and
its volcanic headquarters comes most often to mind).

It starts off strong, literally and narratively--Mr. Incredible is
your standard-issue superhero, with wall-to-wall muscles, blonde
hair, perfect white teeth, manly growl (by Craig T. Nelson, of
course); he's matched brawn for wit by Elastigirl (Holly Hunter), an
elongating super-heroine who admonishes him to "be flexible," and
complemented by Frozone (Samuel Jackson, another growler),
Incredible's faithful friend. Incredible's on top of the superhero
heap; he's universally admired for his exploits and power, flying
high with the glory of it all.

It doesn't last, of course. "The Incredibles'" best conceit is that
public opinion backlash and a flurry of lawsuits forces the
superheroes to hang their capes, go into a kind of 'superhero
protection program,' and lead ordinary lives. Bird over the course
of the next half-hour gives us plenty of evocative sight gags:
Incredible hunched over a tiny desk; Incredible's huge frame
squeezing past doorways and passageway meant for lesser human
beings; Incredible driving home crammed in a rickety little sedan
he's only too happy to snatch up and fling to the ground in
frustration. His situation is a potent metaphor any adult can
identify with, of potential unrealized and repressed, of dreams worn
away by the grind of everyday life, of the exceptional few forced by
the unexceptional rest to come down to the ground and walk like
everyone else.

That doesn't last long, either. A woman named Mirage (Elizabeth
Pena) lures Mr. Incredible (renamed Bob Paar, pun likely intended)
into working for an unknown client, who turns out to be Syndrome
(Jason Lee), a megalomaniac geek with hi-tech powers and malevolent
designs on Incredible and his colleagues. What follows is plenty fun
for the kiddies but decidedly more standard-issue in terms of
animated action fare--big explosions, flying vehicles racing through
jungles (a nod, perhaps, to George Lucas' "Return of the Jedi"--not
a good film, in my opinion to be reminded of), and gigantic killer
robots that are psychotic brothers to the hero of Bird's previous
film ("The Iron Giant"--the design of which was, in turn, probably
inspired by the menacing giant robot in Paul Grimault and Jacques
Prevert's lovely (and unreservedly great) animated feature "The King
and the Bird").

Bird manages to keep your interest--the action may be more
conventional, but it's fast-paced, fairly inventive, and well done,
in its expensively Hollywood way (I had the bad luck of having seen
recently the OVA or OAV (original video animation, or original
animation video) of Kouji Masunari's "Read or Die," which lords it
over this picture in terms of imaginative, large-scale battle
sequences--Hollywood, as I've noted before, keeps scaling one height
of animated storytelling after another, only to find the Japanese
have been there long before). It helps that the characters are
engaging--that Nelson and Hunter, for one, work so well and sound so
married to each other that when they bicker their quarrels have the
familiar rhythms and emotional spikiness of longtime couples; it
also helps that Hunter (who I, for one, keep making the mistake of
taking for granted) has one of the most distinct yet versatile
voices on the big screen, a furry Southern accent that can pour over
you in a maternally soothing (or sexily provocative) drawl, or
startle you with steely resolve.

Perhaps the third best reason to watch this movie is Bird's own
voice performance as Edna 'E' Mode, an eccentric fashion designer
living in a to-die-for ultramodern palace, seducing visiting
ultramen with the latest in superhero chic. Bird, whose accent is a
cross between Dr. Fu Manchu and Dr. Strangelove, and whose character
is reportedly based on legendary Hollywood costumer Edith Head,
walks away with the picture, his little mad scientist of a stylist
easily the wittiest, most engaging character around (it figures that
Bird would give himself not just the coolest accent but most of the
best lines), though not in a way that really serves the story; she's
just there for the costumes, afterwards slipping quietly (and,
rather disappointingly) out of sight.

The rest of the voice actors performed well, though I thought
Jackson's Frozone was mostly wasted. National Public Radio's Sarah
Vowell does nicely raspy work as Violett Paar, the painfully shy
daughter; Pena is suitably sultry as Mirage; Lee is effectively
grating as Syndrome (he irritates you the same time he makes you
realize, through the bitter way he throws Incredible's words back at
the man, that he has a good point), and John Ratzenberger makes a
belated (and also, I think, largely wasted) appearance as The
Underminer.

"The Incredibles" is not perhaps as moving as "The Iron Giant," but
easily the best thing Pixar's ever done--which isn't quite high
praise; mention of Bird's masterpiece can't help but make me
remember that Bird originally intended to do this film in
traditional cel animation (my eternal problem with digital animation
being that there doesn't seem to be a trace of a human hand, much
less personality, behind the style's blandly smooth, texturally
uninteresting solid shapes). Not, building on that previous thought,
perhaps as good as anything from Studio Ghibli's stable of master
animation filmmakers (Hayao Miyazaki ("Spirited Away," "Princess
Mononoke") or Isao Takahata ("Grave of the Fireflies," "My Neighbor
the Yamadas"), to name two), but perhaps better than the rest of
Hollywood's not-very-inspiring recent fare ("Shark Tale," anyone?).
Qualifying that thought even further, maybe not even the best of
recent fare--that honor, I think, belongs to Joe Dante's
commercially unsuccessful (if wildly imaginative) "Looney Tunes:
Back in Action." Still--worth watching, bring the kids.

(First published in Businessworld, 11/12/04)

(Comments? Email me at noelbotevera@...)