The Incredibles begins as a rollicking adventure tale with a highly original premise: What might happen after all those Superman-Batman-Spider-Man superhero movies end.
Then The Incredibles settles down to the all-too-familiar for its finale.
Too bad, because the opening scenes are so much fun. The daring rescues carried out by Mr. Incredible and his wife, Elastigirl, are zanily presented with the emphasis on fun.
Quickly, however, the superheroes become victims of all their save-the-day moments, which include foiling a team of bank robbers in mid flight and stopping an elevated train in its tracks before it can fall through a collapsed section of roadbed. The downside turns out to be all the lawsuits filed by aggrieved parties who were injured during their rescues. Even a suicidal man has sued Mr. Incredible (voice by Craig T. Nelson) for saving him from a jump off a skyscraper.
Now, given new identities and hidden away in a government program similar to the Witness Protection Program, they live mundane lives. This is not good news for the Incredibles, or for their three precocious children -- Dash, Vi and Jack-Jack, whose still-developing powers include super-speed and the creation of force fields. They've had to become suburbanites, ordinary Americans who must hide their superpowers and their do-gooder instincts from their neighbors.
Elastigirl (Holly Hunter) is now a harried housewife. Her children have been forbidden to exhibit their powers at school. (Speed-demon Dash is encouraged to come in second in foot races.) Mr. Incredible himself is a claims adjuster at a bottom-line insurance company where his attempts to let clients know how they can get paid is frowned upon by a browbeating boss.
At night, Mr. Incredible and his pal, Frozone (Samuel L. Jackson), a guy who can create mini glaciers with a wave of his hand, pretend to go bowling. But they're really hiding in alleys, hoping to find crimes in progress that they can jump in on and stop.
Writer-director Brad Bird, who created the wonderful if underrated 2-D animated The Iron Giant and consulted on TV's animated King of the Hill and The Simpsons, puts his skewed, off-the-wall view of suburbia from those shows to good use in the opening sequences of The Incredibles. The daring adventures from the start of the film are quickly counterbalanced by the daily drudgery of the superheroes' new lives, but with comical twists. Mr. Incredible, now known as "Bob," just can't resist showing off his super-strength sometimes, which gets him in trouble.
But it leads to a second chance for "Bob" when a vampish blonde, who calls herself Mirage (Elizabeth Pea), enlists his help. He's asked to stop an enormous sphere-like robot with five tentacled metal arms from taking over the world. He jets to Mirage's secret headquarters on a volcanic island. But when the mission goes awry and Bob realizes that things aren't all they seem, Elastigirl jets to the rescue, accompanied by stowaways Vi and Dash.
From here, The Incredibles begins its really incredible adventures. They include a fiery lava battle with the indestructible Omnidroid robot, a scary plane crash and a kids-to-the-rescue moment which includes young son Dash being chased through a jungle by thugs in zippy one-man flying saucers. The latter sequence is one of the most thrilling in The Incredibles.
But the film, despite its clever touches, begins to look more and more like a cross between a James Bond 007 flick and the Spy Kids movies. Despite the merry lunacy of some scenes and punchy dialogue, The Incredibles' plot begins spinning its wheels on familiar ground, then serves up a master villain who seems smaller than life.
By the time Mr. Incredible takes on the Omnidroid yet again, this time in the middle of a big city, one feels: Been there, done that. (Actually, I had that feeling near the start, when Mr. Incredible stops the elevated train from plunging into a hole. It's nearly identical to a scene in Spider-Man 2. Because The Incredibles required more time to animate than the live-action Spider-Man 2, its sequence went into production first, though it arrived on screen five months later.)
There are some funny characters to liven things, especially Edna Mode, a pint-sized designer to the superheroes who whips up their indestructible suits ("No capes!" she vows after several accidents involving cape-wearing superheroes). She's voiced by Bird himself. Edna steals every scene she's in.
Yet even with all its mayhem, its incredible imagery and its zany view of reality, toward the end The Incredibles begins to seem not so incredible after all.
It's preceded on screen by the Pixar short Boundin', a very funny piece about a can't-stop-dancing fluffy lamb who loses his confidence after his beautiful curly white wool is shorn by shepherds. Suddenly, hairless and pink, he becomes the laughingstock of the animals who used to copy his style.
He's rescued from his funk by a philosophizing jackalope who, in twangy-voiced song, offers inspirational advice, the kind of "everyone's special" advice that seems so much a part of children's films these days.
Boundin' is fast, cheerful and bright. Because it's so short, there's little chance of a misstep.
***
The Incredibles
Starring: Voices: Craig T. Nelson, Holly Hunter, Samuel L. Jackson, Jason Lee, Brad Bird.
Rated: PG, contains violence.
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