Movie Review:The Incredibles

I'm not gonna lie. I love movies. If I could afford it, I'd go to the movies every week; and if I could spare the time, I'd rent videos every day. As such, I thought I should do a movie review every once in a while.

Today's review is on the Disney-Pixar film, The Incredibles. I waited along time to see this movie, with high anticipation. This much-acclaimed movie came highly reccommended to me by everyone I spoke to. Everyone, that is, except the seven-year-old son of my co-worker, Cody. His reasoning was: It's boring. This surprised me. A movie about a family of super heroes... boring? Perhaps this child simlpy has a high thresh hold of excitement, I thought as I popped it into my DVD player. A half hour later I got up to get a popsicle; I was bored.

As I sat through 180 minutes of my life that I can never get back, I couldn't believe that I was watching a movie that had been marketed mainly to children. I don't mean to say that children's movies should have no adult elements in them. Parents' need to be entertained too! Shrek, for example, was entertaining for both children and parents, and the parental entertainment for the most part went unnoticed by the kids' innocent minds (if you don't believe me, go back and watch some of the Muppets movies that you liked as a kid... chances are you'll think to yourself "wow, I didn't get these jokes when I was a kid!") However, The Incredibles wasn't a movie that simply placed adult humor within a kid-friendly plot. The layout and theme of the movie was.. to put it in Cody's words: boring. The first ten minutes was "super" cool. Super heroes fighting bad guys left and right. The superhero characters were clever and, for the most part, unique. The villians they chased, and their techniques- while cheesey- made me laugh. I also liked the concept of showing the difficulties superheroes have in their pursuits.

After the first ten minutes, however, the mood of the movie changed drastically. For the next hour or so, Mr. and Mrs. Incredible argue and discuss their way through a plotline that is over most kids' heads. There was a lot of banter that even I tended to tune out, and it took a lot for me not to turn the DVD off.

There were a few moments when I got a good laugh, but overall the movie wasn't a real winner in my book. The animation wasn't up to par with other Pixar animations, and the plot took a long time to develop, and when it did it didn't develop into much. Unfortunately I have to give The Incredibles a big pttttt.