Do you remember when superhero movies were light-hearted popcorn fare instead of overwrought epics?
"The Incredibles 2," which is absolutely delightful, recalls that time. This is perhaps appropriate, given that the first "Incredibles" movie was released in 2004, before the Christopher Nolan "Batman" reboots and the Marvel Cinematic Universe, when the superhero glut had yet to rob the genre of its sense of novelty and bog it down in self-important ponderousness. We'd had the first two "X-Men" movies and two Tobey Maguire "Spider-Man" movies but, in terms of post-2000 superhero blockbusters, that had been about it.
The first "Incredibles" wasn't a throwback in 2004, but very much in the spirit of that ethos — and, refreshingly, "The Incredibles 2" continues in that spirit.
Picking up immediately where the first film left off, "The Incredibles 2" tells the story of how Mr. Incredible/Bob Parr (Craig T. Nelson), his wife Elastigirl/Helen (Holly Hunter), their daughter Violet (Sarah Vowell) their son Dash (Huck Milner, replacing Spencer Fox from last time) and their infant attempt to gain acceptance as superheroes in a world in which extraordinary people are viewed as suspect and superheroics have been explicitly outlawed. In the first film, this theme was used to touch on the libertarian-ish idea that if everyone is special, no one is. Here it is used to promote another moral that is unusual, perhaps even subversive, for a family movie: That when a law is unjust, the right thing to do is conscientiously break it until politicians see the light.
The protagonists of "The Incredibles 2" are provided with the opportunity to do precisely that when a superhero-adoring tycoon named Winston Deavor (Bob Odenkirk) and his sister Evelyn (Catherine Keener) recruit Mr. Incredible, Elastigirl and their friend Frozone (Samuel L. Jackson) to perform acts of heroism while wearing body cameras so that the world can see that they are saving lives and protecting property rather than causing the destruction and mayhem which seems to always accompany them. In order to minimize the collateral damage caused by their superheroics, however, the Deavors ask that Elastigirl work alone during the initial stages of their image rehabilitation plan, an idea that makes perfect sense. As a result, "The Incredibles 2" winds up telling two quite different stories that only merge in Act Three — that of Elastigirl as she attempts to uncover the identity of the mysterious villain Screenslaver, and that of Bob as he stays at home and parents without Helen.
This second plot proves to be by far the more entertaining one. The best comedy in "The Incredibles 2" comes from watching Bob deal with the family drama that one would expect when the brood in question is composed of superheroes. Violet is understandably upset that her successful attempt at courting one of her male peers was compromised by the well-meaning teenager's memory getting wiped in order to protect her secret identity. Dash, on the other hand, is struggling with a more relatable problem — his math homework — with Bob himself being frustrated at the fact that there is a "new way" of teaching math, a subject he proclaims with righteous indignation doesn't need any modifications.
Most memorable, though, is the sub-plot involving the Parrs' infant son Jack-Jack, who has developed a number of superpowers and goes about using them to get into characteristically infantile antics. Of course, when the infant in question has the ability to turn into a monster, shoot lasers from his eyes and pop in and out of alternate dimensions, baby-ish adventures take on a hair-raising and heavily destructive quality, one that would deprive even the most diligent parents of much-needed sleep. The funniest moments in "The Incredibles 2" come from the various ways in which Jack-Jack gets into trouble and Bob Parr's exhausted attempts to rein him in, as well as the way a cameo character from the first film ultimately helps him get a handle on things.
This isn't to say that the plot thread involving Elastigirl's adventures aren't interesting. The action sequences in which she saves the day are reasonably enjoyable — although I must confess to growing a tad numb from all of the superheroics I've seen in recent movies — and Elastigirl herself is so ingenuously resourceful that she could easily carry her own movie. The problem with this storyline, though, is that much of it revolves around the audience supposedly not knowing who Screenslaver actually is. I ascertained the villain's actual identity pretty much immediately, and the murmurs of the audience members around me indicated that many of them had done likewise. If the film had exposed the character's identity at an earlier point, this plot might not have felt quite as routine; instead the revelatory moment is less surprising than it is a cue to the audience that Act Two has finally ended.
This minor weakness aside, "The Incredibles 2" is perhaps most refreshing now because it is such a major stylistic departure from its genre. While most critics acknowledge that the DC Cinematic Universe is too dark and brooding to be much fun (save for the excellent "Wonder Woman," which it must be noted worked in part because it was neither dark nor brooding), even the Marvel Cinematic Universe and X-Men Universe have gotten carried away by their own grandiosity. Gone are the days when being a superhero seemed like an absolute blast: It seems nearly every superhero movie these days has to be bogged down in maudlin melodrama, lofty character arcs and self-consciously spectacular action sequences in which nothing less than the fate of the world or universe is at stake.
Sure there are still superhero films out there that try to keep their characters grounded and their stories comparatively smaller ("Spider-Man: Homecoming" and the "Deadpool" movies come to mind), but there are far more that aim for the pseudo-epic feel of "Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice" — that is, where everything feels huge and overwhelmed with its own importance, and the numerous heroes themselves are stuffed into the plot rather than seeming to exist there organically. This isn't to say that all of these movies are bad ("Captain America: Civil War" is a notable exception), but it is a sign that the superhero genre has lost touch with its roots. At a time when a mediocrity like "Avengers: Infinity War" can be a hit just because it ratchets all of its plot elements to the nth degree, we need "The Incredibles 2" to remind us of what it's like to just have fun.
Shares