I just saw The Incredibles and it was very good!

So yeah, The Incredibles was indeed pretty incredible. It had some of the best action sequences I've seen all year. I loved Samuel Jackson as FROZONE. Also, I took my son who now claims he IS Dash, and has been running ridiculously fast ever since we left the theater.

I haven't seen this movie yet (and I want to), but, in A.O. Scott's defense, I think that when Scott's working one of his riffs, he's better than most other movie reviewers. Even when he's "wrong" (and I do think he can be wrong, sometimes very wrong), he's wrong in a way that has a really compelling and sympathetic thought process and point of view behind it, if that makes sense.

photo realistic computer animation is a long ways off, as underlined by that repellent 'Polar Express' trailer. but this movie points towards an amazing hyper-realism that I haven't seen in a pixar film yet. characters that are markedly different sizes, convincingly moving around in the same space -- it gets to your head, it involves you.

the one mom/daughter moment outside the cave was nice and I felt a little heart tug, then realized I'm staring at a 'character' whose eyes occupy almost the entire top half of her head and her nose is the size of a pea, and I FLIPPED OUT

the link to the NYT article has expired, couldn't read it, but it is there a little bit... a few lines transparently nailing in some stockpile family values lines, but it's not The Lion King or anything

Fellow superheroes Elastigirl (L), Frozone (R) and Mr. Incredible strike crimefighting poses at the Disney-MGM Studios in Lake Buena Vista, Florida November 1, 2004. The characters greeted guests inside the newly reopened attraction 'The Magic of Disney Animation.'

The big-band music was a little distracting to me, but at least it was "different." Pixar is so much a cut above; there was a trailer for some DreamWorks movie about zoo animals that looked just awful.

I didn't see how the "reactionary" agenda was applicable to the real world at all, except for a few gentle little things like the remark about "rewarding mediocrity" with fourth-grade graduations, and Violet poking fun at her dad's therapy language as she takes action. The "keep the supers down" theme seemed very specific to the superhero world itself (and also to "Watchmen" and "The Dark Knight Returns" and the X-Men and a bunch of other comics from the '80s [I have an issue of "Action Comics" that follows around Superman's lawyer as he tails Superman on a standard day of heroics, documenting the appropriate use of force, etc.]). Maybe I just lack the imagination to complete some icky metaphor, but I didn't see the movie as being anti-affirmative action or anything. (If anything, it seemed to reign itself in at the end - it was interesting how the family was content with Dash coming in second place, and suppressing his greatness. I thought he was going to run 23 times around the track or something.)

Plus, the supers hardly seemed like Ayn Rand types, considering that helping the weak and innocent (for Mr. Incredible and Frozone, at least) was so much in their blood, they couldn't give it up.

Couple of things:

the "oh crap" moment when the car is emerging from out of its vanishing point at escape velocity

Completely blanking on this moment for some reason -- which car where now?

Edna = my favorite character hands down. Ridiculously great.

The Watchmen observations are spot on, I suspect this is as close as we'll ever get to a Watchmen film.

I might have missed it, but no comparisons to James Bond yet on this thread? The film *screamed* Bond homage after a certain point, invoking a ton of the tropes -- the (ha-hem) 'cartoonish' death of various evil underlings, the design of the base (very VERY You Only Live Twice), the elegant dining room-in-impossible-setting, the 'female henchwoman who goes over to the good side' (though not in traditional Bond fashion, of course), the ending that's not quite THE ending, and absolutely the music. To be sure a lot of Bond-in-film's approach is a realization of comic hyperdrama so it's not a real surprise, but I think it's clearly a thread throughout.

Did anyone else like the slightly bizarre but fun Jack Lemmon/Walter Matthau 'Odd Couple' cameo at the end? Really didn't expect it and I don't think it had any context but it was sure fun.

The movie is definitely an indictment of evil fanboy obsessiveness more than anything else. ;-)

I liked this a lot, especially once the action got going. It was thrilling when Violet and Dash figured out how to use their powers together. And Frozone skating through the city was just beautiful.

It did take a little while, I think, to fully fire on all fours -- that said the script and plot tended to demand slow going up for a bit. Seeing more of Frozone would have been fantastic, he was almost shoehorned into the end there but at least it happened.

And now that I think about it, while I wouldn't say you *couldn't* hide being fired from one job and then getting recruited for another one from your spouse, in a plot with a huge amount of clearly unrealistic elements *that* actually stood out as a bit grating!

Violet and the Bitchy Girls in Homeroom

Jack-Jack Discovers Poops

guess they had to go with another This American Life commentator.

TELL ME.

Watchmen comparison OTM, but it also reminded me of a comic called

Watchmen comparison OTM, but it also reminded me of a comic called Marvels that had a similar theme of exceptionalism versus the ingratitude (jadedness?) of the general populace (as manipulated by the ruling classes). The edges in this case were much more smoothed, though, making some of the faint Randism arguably more palatable. The four members of the nuclear family could be roughly comparable to the Fantastic Four, too (and how close to Silver Surfer was Frozone when he was snowboarding and speedskating around those city streets?).

Violet was indeed adorable, but the hint of creepiness was definitely of a bulimic nature, given that she could actually become invisible. I mean, how much more anorexic could she be? Likewise, Dash was quintessentially ADD/ADHD. All of which helped give it that postmodern or just simply contemporary appeal.

Yeah, this movie's a blast.

(Sorry, HTML problems)

It can. But the modernist aesthetic the movie makes use of (both in terms of visuals and in its good-thing-writ-large-equals-great-thing approach to animation and writing) is pretty soulless and I didn't find anything in the characters or plot to counteract that. So on balance it comes off as a soulless movie.

It kind of felt like I was watching an afternoon talk show filmed on a freeway overpass.

Oh, those National Review guys are so cute. I wonder what they thought of the movie's depiction of the insurance industry as corporate bloodsuckers? I mean, there's some cartoonish (ha) Objectivism there, along with the jabs at trial lawyers, but the attacks on public education seem as much in line with '60s anti-conformism as '90s Gingrichism. And the government itself is embodied by the sympathetic agent who keeps on bailing Bob out and reminds him tiredly that taxpayers are footing the bill for his outbursts. And Bob's character arc is all about him learning that he can't do things on his own, he needs other people. Politically, the movie's a nigh-on incoherent mishmash. Which is fine with me. I had a good time.

Yeah, I loved those -- made perfect sense that they didn't show them until the end of the movie, as otherwise they would have given it away. ;-)

Frozone was more a straight crib of Iceman.

Violet was indeed adorable, but the hint of creepiness was definitely of a bulimic nature, given that she could actually become invisible. I mean, how much more anorexic could she be?

Interesting take, but to be pedantic, anorexia and bulimia are separate disorders.

when Screen Slaver had their jump scare reveal, someone in the theatre got so scared they ripped a fart and the entire audience started laughing. ruined the moment a lil.

something something fascism Rand

that’s what happens when you eat beans

everybody farts, which is just another way of saying nobody does