I really wasn’t too excited about this one following the less than engrossing Cars. Even though I love food, I love cooking food, I love watching people cook; it seemed like an even stranger start-point for a Pixar movie than the last one. However, for at least the first hour here, I was completely enraptured by the smoother-than-ever animation, the truly humble voicework; and when the food started being thrown around, in the gorgeously rendered digital Paris? Let’s just say this one certainly has more than its share of moments that more than match the best parts of the Toy Stories, Finding Nemo, and Monsters Inc.

It’s not without its flaws. I didn’t really buy the whole Remy-controlling-Linguine thing, it got a little annoying at times. And I don’t mean like, I have problems suspending my disbelief kind of way – it’s just, alongside the much more subtle, even beautiful, way the unlikely pair first communicate, it’s just that bit too farfetched by comparison. Like Cars, too, it’s certainly a little overlong, and there’s a good slog in the second half that had me squirming a little for something to happen.

But then there’s all the good. I loved the vertically challenged head chef – everytime he thought he’d seen a rat he totally reminded me of Herbert Lom in the Pink Panther movies, and a quick Google search tells me I’m not alone in noticing this. Michael Giacchino’s score is sheer perfection, way better than his work on The Incredibles which I personally wasn’t as overwhelmed by as some.

Overall, this is a step up for Pixar following Cars, that’s for sure. It’s a movie I will certainly watch more than a few times again, and I think the highest praise from me must be that I won’t be too crushed if it beats out Meet the Robinsons at next year’s Oscars for the Best Animated Feature award. I only wish there’d been more of the digital Paris. They could’ve almost just had a virtual camera roaming the streets of that model for 2 hours to Giacchino’s music and I would’ve been in heaven.

I’d totally forgotten how fantastic this movie was – I thought it was all about Jessie and the “When She Loved Me” sequence for me, but everything that surrounds those (I have to say) highlights is more frenetic, hysterical (“It’s the chicken man!” “Look, Barbie – a big ugly man doll!” lol), and, even on an umpteenth viewing, still shockingly more poignant than I ever expect.

But like I said, this movie kind of needs go no further for me than the character of Jessie – there are little quirks here like the kinda-half-dance she does on the turntable after she gets the hang of the motion, the pulling-her-hat-down-over-her head thing, that just touch me somewhere that an animated doll in all reason shouldn’t be able to touch, lol – and the whole “When She Loved Me” sequence, Emily growing, the horses turning to nail polish, that is one of the most beautiful, crushing, painfully truthful 3 minutes Pixar have ever produced … I think maybe it got me even more today because it’s been a long time not only since I watched the movie but even longer since I watched it alone, and it’s one of those sequences, you just wanna be alone, curled up in the dark, crying to that song. I do, anyway. But there’s always the thrilling climax and all the other wonderful stuff I’m too lazy to mention if that isn’t your thing This is just a beautiful movie that takes my breath away every time.

My third review in practically as many months – I must like this movie or something. It just gets better with each viewing. One thing I hadn’t noticed until now on DVD is the movie’s fairly astonishing length of just under 2 hours: very rare in animated movies, and considering the size of this movie, it’s a brave (or insane) bunch of animators, film makers, and technicians that decided to make this thing.

I still can’t take my eyes off Violet, my favourite character. I can just relate to her so much. She alone puts the movie among my all-time favourites. I love how everything about her indicates something about her. Her name, Violet, shrinking violet; her long black hair always there for her to hide behind; her superpowers, invisibility (hiding again) and force field (even more protection from the harsh weird world). I realise that all the characters are built in this way, but it’s Violet that I really connect to. Sarah Vowell’s voice is beautiful, too. I love Violet’s gawkish movements. One thing I always hate about computer animation is that for some reason characters’ motions always appear stilted. Small gestures can work really well, but running and walking and stuff almost never works. Violet is a major exception. I love the expression on her face while trying to make a forcefield around a crashing plane; and again when she’s practicing her skills around a campfire; the way she prods the Omnidroid’s remote manically, not knowing what to do, but knowing that something must be done. That’s Violet in a nutshell, really: she has power and responsibility for the first time in her life, she just doesn’t know what to do with it. She’s simultaneously inquisitive and terrified.

I do find the movie’s message a little weird. I first read, I think, on the IMDb message boards, what I first considered as a case of a person reading way too much into a movie, but you don’t really have to look far into it to see this odd message – Buddy/Syndrome actually begins with noble aspirations, he just wants to be a superhero like his heroes, and he works I’m guessing fairly hard at making pretty stunning inventions, rocket boots etc, to the point where he actually has real power, only nobody ever recognises his talent and encourages it towards good use, not even Mr. Incredible, who tells Syndrome as a boy to just go home. There’s no wonder he rebels. The final message of the movie seems to be very cynical indeed – that some people are just plain “better” than others, and nobody should ever bother trying to break into that clique, because they’ll probably just be mistaken as a villain anyway. It does strike me as a little snobbish.

Is it enough to take away from my enjoyment of the movie? I think it might actually make the movie better. It’s one of those complicated things that makes a movie come over different on every viewing. One time I may see it as a negative, sad interpretation of the world; another I might see it is gleefully cynical and true. In any case, on every viewing there’ll always at least be the animation, music, and production design (the latter two should definitely have both been nominated for Oscars, btw). And of course, my little shameful virtual crush, Violet.

The DVD is the usual expected from Disney/Pixar – you get about an hour of behind-the-scenes stuff, a bunch of deleted scenes at various stages of completion, “Jack-Jack Attack”, a short which reveals exactly what happened with Jack-Jack and Kari, “Boundin’”, the short that played before The Incredibles in cinemas, which comes with a commentary by the director and a little featurette about him, and Easter Eggs on pretty much every screen of Disc 2 (just wait for the Omnidroid icon to appear). I wish there was more artwork on the disc – usually I hate stills galleries, but I would have loved to see more of Violet’s character development, and flyarounds of the sets and characters as they had on the Toy Story discs. Two commentaries and a preview of Cars are on disc one, plus a funny intro where Brad Bird bitches about fullscreen chopping.

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5th December ‘04:

Maybe it’s because I watched it directly after The Polar Express, which was such a disappointment, or maybe it’s because for the past 2 weeks I’ve been slightly insanely obsessing over Violet and it was a thrill to see her again, maybe it’s because I watched it at 7am after being up all night (maybe these things all roll into one…). I have a feeling this movie’s going to continue to get better with subsequent viewings.

I still feel there’s something missing from The Incredibles, and I noticed even more this time the similarities to movies past: Spy Kids being the most notable, and the sound effects were a little too annoyingly Star Wars-ish for my liking in places.

But this is an astonishing movie in a lot of ways, many I clearly missed the first time around. The whole plane crash sequence made my jaw drop a little on the virgin viewing, but this time I was mesmerised by the number of things being handled onscreen, and finally by the amazing water effects, including the wet hair on all the characters.

I pretty much spent this viewing gawping at the quality of the animation (or grinning at Violet when she was on :-p), so I’ll probably pick up on plenty more story and character things next time.

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11th November ‘04

How can I possibly call this movie a disappointment? I can’t. Yet it’s no Finding Nemo, and I have to point this out since I read some interview with the director Brad Bird (whose The Iron Giant was a masterpiece, one of my top 100 movies of all time) where he said something along the lines of “if The Incredibles makes less than Finding Nemo it’s the end of Pixar”. And really, The Incredibles does not deserve to make as much as Nemo. I’m really beginning to worry for Pixar – I saw the trailer for Cars moments before seeing The Incredibles and all I can say for that movie is that perhaps it will pave the way for an animated version of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Starlight Express ... if it’s a success.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with The Incredibles. It just feels to me like Pixar is resting on its laurels, much like Disney have done too many times before. We knew they were capable of this; usually they surprise us with new capabilities. The story here is simple, the beginnings of a franchise if ever there were one; the character designs are awesome – between Violet’s hair and Mom’s ass I have a year’s worth of visual praise; what’s missing is the great visual gags, and superb characterisation and story of Nemo, Monsters and the Toy Storys.

But though I can’t overpraise it at all, I really can’t dismiss it for the things I loved; its few precious moments still overwhelm most recent movies, and honestly, Mom’s butt is a sight of realism to behold.

Officially speaking, this is a virgin viewing. I downloaded the movie around the time of its theatrical release but it was either a workprint (‘cos I’m pretty sure there were scenes on the final cut, this DVD, that I hadn’t seen before, all through the movie) or just a version that failed to include the opening (which I had definitely not seen before, the whole Nemo’s mother bit, I never even saw Coral, lol)... either way, at least I’m legal again now, I purchased the DVD, Disney/Pixar have their money :-p

This is the best animated movie ever made to date. I say that even at the same time as maintaining movies like Spirit and Tarzan among my own personal all-time faves, and keeping those two in particular up top of my listing… but technically speaking, as far as animation is concerned, this movie is the all-time best, like, technically speaking, say, Citizen Kane is the greatest live action. The colour is simply incredible, the rendering of the CG imagery, just, everything, is the absolute pinnacle of achievement in this field. This is the first truly worthy recipient of Best Animated Feature at the Oscars. Andrew Stanton certainly received the biggest honour he could have for this movie, but I would add too, that this movie has the second best screenplay of all-time, perhaps even a tie, next to Back to the Future, in my opinion, just the basic use of storytelling… not clever screenwriting like something like Fargo or The Big Sleep or Chinatown or The Usual Suspects, all great screenplays, but this, along with Back to the Future, just tells a story, cinematically, perfectly. Stanton should have received this award too. It owes a lot to Hitchcock, like Back to the Future did (it contains at least two straight homages, to Psycho and The Birds, but plenty more is indebted to Hitch).

It’s beautiful, and when you compare it to Disney’s own releases post-Tarzan, you can understand and appreciate why Pixar have ditched Disney… I cannot wait for their future productions. It’s like they have literally stolen the magic of Disney for themselves… these guys know how to make a “Disney movie”... only now it’s Pixar.

One thing I would add, just a personal note really ‘cos I know exactly the reason the movie didn’t end this way, it just wouldn’t sit with most people… but I felt this on the “first” viewing and again on this viewing. I may be morbid… but I think the movie would be that bit more powerful and would probably still work for the audience it has and yet draw a whole other audience, if Nemo had actually died at the end. If I’d had anything to do with the story sessions for the movie, I’d have been first to argue this to the point of being fired, ‘cos I think it really would add a lot to the resonance of the movie. They make you think he’s dead… they make you anticipate your own reaction to his death, it works pretty well for that… but y’know, it’d just be so moving if he’d actually sacrificed himself, for Dory, his new mother, that Marlon let him go ‘cos for once he was being trusting… it’d just be really complex and true to life and… blah… I just feel it would have made the movie even beyond the perfect it already is

This is going to go up and up in my opinion on each viewing. It’s relentlessly entertaining, and artistically as perfect as possible.