Review of The Incredibles (2004) by Shayan S — 20 Jun 2018

Quick Review: There's been a lot of filmmakers that I haven't been able to over the years catch a lot of their main filmography with, and director Brad Bird for whatever reason has been one of those people despite the many critically acclaimed and widely pop cultured animated films he's made. Which means despite his Mission Impossible film (which I thought was incredibly solid and entertaining throughout) and Tomorrowland (which left a bitter taste in my mouth thanks to David Lindelofs involvement, who I don't personally like at al and who also forced Brad Bird to not do Star Wars which he was close to doing, despite solid direction and interesting world building and story ideas) his other acclaimed animated feats have flown over my radar; but with the sequel release to todays review just hitting theaters I figured it was finally time to sit down and watch The Incredibles to see how i'd feel about it. And I can happily say after watching it that it went beyond what was I expecting; that being an incredibly enjoyable and almost amazing film with a lot of surprising engaging and uniqueness to its world building and twist on the superhero storyline. And i'm happy to say besides just some bare nitpicks such as with its animation not holding up as much, the ending and especially some resolutions to the characters arcs feeling a little cliche and predictable, and the only one major complaint wishing the film could be more longer and slower paced to fully explore its genuinely interesting themes and develop some of the even more interesting main heroes character arcs, I would say these don't do merely enough to hurt the films otherwise very heavy and outstanding positives coming from a very talented VA cast who add a lot of likability and enjoyability to their characters, a very jazzy and energetic score by my favourite composer Michael Giacchino who really brings out a lot of style and some memorable as hell leitmotif and melodies, a shockingly well structured and engaging story that manages to be unique and interestingly bleak and depressing but still engaging and fun for anyone to watch on, some really fun side characters that help give a lot of the humour and world building some nice fun escapism, the main characters all feeling really well written and given lots of great moments to shine on their own and surprisingly very sympathetic character arcs, well balanced script and tone that helps keep the story being affective despite mixing a lot of tones very well, and of course lastly the absolutely wonderful dark but fun world building that I think without accompanying this story would've felt very almost by the numbers.

So overall i'm happy to say that for Brad Birds first film for Pixar, and continuation after what i'm sure must of felt pressure from everyone to live up to the emotional heights of The Iron Giant, was definitely nothing short of something genuinely unique and honestly really well put together; In a lot of ways being one of those Pixar films next to Wall-E, Finding Nemo, Up, and you can argue a lot of other of their originals that really use a lot of creativity and dark world building with fun or emotionally engaging stories to be timeless classics. Definitely recommend seeing it if you haven't, and for me now that Brad Bird has shown me he really can animate super well here's hoping his other features (including the sequel to this) can hopefully show me a lot more of what he's capable of.

Score: 8.5 / 10.