Family Movie Night
By Karyn Bowman
One of my most favorite movies of all time in The Incredibles.
Image from IMDb.com
I don’t mean favorite animated movie or favorite family movie.
I meant what I said that this is one of my favorite movies of all time.
It is almost a perfect movie. You could ask me next week and I might say it is a perfect movie.
The story is about a family who are secretly supers. They each have special powers and abilities. Super strength, super stretchiness, super speed, and super energy control. They have to hide their super powers after various lawsuits against supers go badly.
Bob works in an insurance company as a claims adjuster who tries to hard to make claims go through. The problem is his boss wants them to not go through and save money for the shareholders.
It doesn’t help that life, after being a super, is kinda boring. Go to work, have supper, clean up, go to bed, do it all over again. You can wait for something exciting to happen or make it happen. Bob makes a decision that will cause excitement in his life. But it is a decision that will fully impact his family.
What makes this movie one of the greats is that nearly every scene is capable of being a stand alone moment. These are perfectly captured moments of human emotion. The feeling of being left behind, of not being able to use your skills to their full abilities, of loving life in the moment, of being afraid or happy or joyful.
It doesn’t hurt that the action scenes are well choreographed and interesting. How a super can move, depending on their abilities, is fascinating. From the Fro-zone to the baby’s developing skills, we see just one these suits can do to protect the wear. What is more interesting is seeing the children discover their power and abilities.
It is also the comic touches that make this movie great. The heaviness of the movie is lightened time and again which keeps an audience engaged. The scene in which Bob visits the superhero costume designer is classic for the character’s persona. Her subsequent visit from Helen is another exercise of comic explanation of super suits.
I find myself laughing and crying and smiling within each scene. There are many times that I marvel at the ease and beauty of the animation and the music that accompanies each scene to set the emotion. I like that we know each character really well, that we understand their motivations.
We don’t always get that in a movie like this. We barely learn a person’s reasoning for doing their actions or hiding rational reasons. Some characters remain a mystery. But not in this movie.
I would watch it whenever it showed up on TV, because it is just that good. And with the new sequels about to show up, it is always good to have back up information about the new movie.
Until next week, see you in the rental aisle.
Notes from Rumbly Cottage 