the incredibles (10/10)

I was lucky enough to attend a preview of Pixar's Next Big Thing, "The Incredibles". And boy, it's going to be hard going through this blog without using the word "incredible" and looking smug, but I'll try. In fact, I already failed.

In any case, WOW. This is, BY FAR, the MOST adult Pixar film to date. It is rated PG for cartoon violence, and sure, there's that, but that's not the adult part. Characters spew lines that I never thought would appear in a Pixar film. For example, Bob the father (ala Mr. Incredible), on a 4th grade graduation ceremony: "It's not a graduation! He's just passing from 4th grade to 5th grade! Why do we look for every possible chance to celebrate mediocrity?"

My jaw really dropped at this. This is so amazingly cynical, biting and incisive that you expect it from the mouth of, say, Woody Allen, but not a Pixar-animated father figure! Immediately, I knew this was going to be a very different film from the standard Pixar fare.

And it is. The Incredibles, as Monsters Inc., is bursting at the seams with imagination. There are breathtaking scenes that rival the sheer joy of creativity in the door-hanger scene in Monsters Inc. And the action scenes look absolutely stunning. But what really sets it apart is the amount of darkness in the material, from the truly dysfunctional family (instead of the standard I'm-an-orphan fare) to the issues of arrogance, neglect and death.

The director is Brad Bird, the mastermind behind "The Iron Giant", one of the finest animated films to come out of America. That movie, as The Incredibles, is funny, but in a different way from other Pixar films. The Incredibles has fewer zingers that almost entirely carried Finding Nemo, but it does have more situational comedy. Recall the robot-hand-in-the-house scene from The Iron Giant, and you get the idea.

Better still -- like The Iron Giant, The Incredibles is touching without being mushy. It is poignant, and it deals with the big issues, but without the usual preachiness. In fact, The Incredibles is probably the most morally-ambiguous Pixar film to date. Most of the characters have real flaws -- I don't mean just laziness or insecurity. There's a genuinely dark side to many of the characters, and good and evil is no longer so clear-cut. I really loved that as well.

Graphically, it looks amazing. The Incredibles features the best-looking computer-generated water effects to date. Sure, Finding Nemo has some of that, but it is mostly underwater, and as we know, the hard part is in modeling the water surface. The Incredibles has multiple scenes of characters in water -- and, even more amazing -- things splashing into water with stunning realism. The human characters are still not perfect -- Dash, in particular, looks very plastic for some reason -- but they're not expected to be.

I can go on and on about the complicated story, the sharp dialogue or the creative action sequences, but work is calling me. Suffice it to say that The Incredibles is the best Pixar film to date, and, as it stands right now, the best film of the year.

For fun, I'm listing my ranking of Pixar films:

Top Pixar Films:
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1. The Incredibles -- 10; as I said
   
2. Toy Story 2 -- 10; everything you could want in a film
   
3. Monsters, Inc. -- 9; funny and intelligent except for the slightly lame ending
   
4. Finding Nemo -- 9; very well-done but exhausting; road trip movies (like Lord of the Ring) are not my thing
   
5. Toy Story -- 8; I liked it, but was never overly impressed
   
6. A Bug's Life -- 7; Antz was better