Post by rberman on Jun 19, 2018 15:34:36 GMT -5
Hey, nobody started a thread on this yet! It had the best opening for any animated film in history ($180 million), which also puts it in the top ten opening weekends for all films. We saw it last night with family members ranging from 2 to 70.
The original The Incredibles was a "man has a midlife crisis and flirts with a new secret life independent of his wife and kids" drama wrapped in a "Fantastic Four meet James Bond" action-comedy veneer with an "obsessed fanboys are really obnoxious" meta-element as the cherry on top.
This time out it's a "Mr. Mom" story, as a corporate magnate takes a personal interest in restoring super-heroes to their former acclaim in society, with Elasti-Girl tapped as the standard bearer. While mom is out stopping runaway maglev trains, dad is stuck at home, pretending to hold it together while learning/teaching New Math, counseling his teen daughter on her teen dramas, and wrangling a baby prone to burst into flames.
I confess to disappointment that the corporate benefactor was not as benign as initially presented, mainly because that "plot twist" has had the life twisted out of it through incessant use. Also, without the James Bond trappings of the first film, the Saul Bass-inspired art and Bernard Hermann-style music design made for a less thematically cohesive experience.
But those are relatively minor quibbles. A half-dozen other heroes debuted in roles of varying sizes, including most prominently a Portal-making woman named Void. I hadn't previously realized that writer/director Brad Bird also provided the voice of pint-sized fashion maven Edith Head, I mean Edna Mode. A psychologist could probably have a field day analyzing the words that Bird puts in Edna's mouth. And the villain Screenslaver delivers a lengthy monologue about how media addiction makes it convenient for us to experience a lower-quality and vicarious life than the one we would have if we turned off the screens and went outside to live for ourselves. Overall, a fun movie that accomplishes its goal of remaking the original without seeming to remake the original.
The original The Incredibles was a "man has a midlife crisis and flirts with a new secret life independent of his wife and kids" drama wrapped in a "Fantastic Four meet James Bond" action-comedy veneer with an "obsessed fanboys are really obnoxious" meta-element as the cherry on top.
This time out it's a "Mr. Mom" story, as a corporate magnate takes a personal interest in restoring super-heroes to their former acclaim in society, with Elasti-Girl tapped as the standard bearer. While mom is out stopping runaway maglev trains, dad is stuck at home, pretending to hold it together while learning/teaching New Math, counseling his teen daughter on her teen dramas, and wrangling a baby prone to burst into flames.
I confess to disappointment that the corporate benefactor was not as benign as initially presented, mainly because that "plot twist" has had the life twisted out of it through incessant use. Also, without the James Bond trappings of the first film, the Saul Bass-inspired art and Bernard Hermann-style music design made for a less thematically cohesive experience.
But those are relatively minor quibbles. A half-dozen other heroes debuted in roles of varying sizes, including most prominently a Portal-making woman named Void. I hadn't previously realized that writer/director Brad Bird also provided the voice of pint-sized fashion maven Edith Head, I mean Edna Mode. A psychologist could probably have a field day analyzing the words that Bird puts in Edna's mouth. And the villain Screenslaver delivers a lengthy monologue about how media addiction makes it convenient for us to experience a lower-quality and vicarious life than the one we would have if we turned off the screens and went outside to live for ourselves. Overall, a fun movie that accomplishes its goal of remaking the original without seeming to remake the original.
