Coastal View News
Before “Incredibles 2” flew onto the screen at my local theater
not a week ago, a special kind of preview came up. It was the voice actors from
“Incredibles 2”—Holly Hunter, Craig T. Nelson, Samuel L. Jackson, and so on—as well
as some of the creators. They wanted to apologize, with utmost earnestness, with
heartfelt sincerity, for taking so dang long to make a second “Incredibles”
movie. They just knew, deep down, how badly we wanted—nay, needed—yet another superhero movie, and indeed, one
featuring none other than them.
Imagine that!
Well, all right, maybe they’re right. We don’t need many more
superhero movies, I don’t think, but any time is high time for another “Incredibles”
movie.
“Incredibles 2” picks up right where the first one left
off. Fresh off vanquishing the evil mastermind, Syndrome, our incredible family
of superheroes—Elastigirl (Holly Hunter), Violet (Sarah Vowell), Dash (Huck
Milner), Jack-Jack (Eli Fucile), and Mr. Incredible himself (Craig T. Nelson)—are
confronted with a new baddie. So they immediately spring into action, confront
evil, save lives, pursue the enemy, fight the good fight, etc.
And what do they get for their heroism? Arrested. Superheroes
are banned, after all. So despite their care for the common folk, they get no love
back. One problem is they keep smashing up everything around them. For example,
when they fight the aforementioned baddie—a mole-looking guy named Underminder
who is trying to rob a bank—they pretty much demolish several city blocks. And
they didn’t even stop him! If they would have just left the menacing marsupial
alone he would have run away with the cash but nothing and no one would have been
harmed.
The other problem is that, when the superheroes do their
work, the only thing the townsfolk ever see is destruction. They don’t witness
all the heroic stuff. So they associate superheroes, not with heroism, hope,
safety, or whatnot, but rather, they associate them with cataclysm. Hence, they
don’t like them.
So superheroes are banned. No superheroism allowed!
But at least one guy (aside from the superheroes) wants
to change that. Winston Deaver (Bob Odenkirk), a rich telecommunications tycoon,
believes that the world is better off with the supers afoot. So he, along with
his sister, Evelyn (Catherine Keener), hatch a plan to reshape the masked
crusaders’ public image so as to alleviate the ongoing discrimination against
them.
They start with Elastigirl, since, in general, she does
less destroying than, say, Mr. Incredible. Winston and Evelyn put a tiny camera
in Elastigirl’s suit so that, when she does her high speed hijinks, everyone
can see that she really is fighting the good fight—that she is putting her life
at risk, trying her best to preserve life, limb, and infrastructure, and is
doing a pretty darn good job at it.
It works. People’s perceptions of superheroes start to
come around. There is even some talk of lifting the superhero ban.
Meanwhile, Mr. Incredible is in a fight of his own. He’s
playing daddy daycare. He’s got to watch the kids while mom goes to work. At
first he thinks, “I’m tough, no problem”. But, of course, he really is no match
for Dash’s math homework or Violet’s boy trouble. And then when Jack-Jack
starts exhibiting super powers—uncontrollable ones at that—it’s mayhem at the
homestead.
So each parent has their respective task. And they each
have their challenges too. Jack-Jack is exploding and occasionally popping into
another dimension, on the one hand, and evil doers are providing their own kind
of challenge for Elastigirl.
But it’s not just the regular villains, or even ones of
the super sort, that are tying Elastigirl in knots. Someone else is lurking
behind the scenes. This person, whoever they are, is committed to keeping
superheroes in the dog house or, even better, the big house.
“Incredibles 2” is a ton of fun. As I said before, it
picks up right where the last one left off. And not just story-wise. The same
charms enchant this superhero family and the same thrills keep this moving
humming from start to finish.
Now, with that said, I do have to register that “Incredibles”
and, now, “Incredibles 2” are not at the top of my Pixar list. That’s because,
while fun and even touching at times, these movies don’t push the envelope like
some of the others. They don’t provide the emotional gut punch of, say, the opening
montage of “Up”. They don’t evoke that deep sense of poignant sadness that we
get at the end of “Inside Out,” or the longing brought on by Jesse’s tale in “Toy
Story 2”, or the golden nostalgia found in the ending sequences of “Toy Story 3”.
Nor do they offer anything like the biting (yet totally) apt social commentary
of “Wall-E”. In sort, the “Incredibles” movies won’t make you cry, or ache, or
remember; nor will they force to think too hard.
However, they will make you smile.
