42nd Favorite Movie - The Incredibles

Make sure you have read the first post in this series ("My 50 Favorite Movies") before you read on...

A few weeks ago we had a "Disney Night" with the high schoolers. That night I said my favorite Disney movie was Robin Hood. Now this can be a touchy subject for some people, but if you were to include Pixar under the category of "Disney", then my favorite Disney movie would be The Incredibles.

The mastermind behind The Incredibles was neither Disney nor Pixar. It was Brad Bird. Previously an executive consultant for The Simpsons (he is partially responsible for taking the show from 1 minute sketches on The Tracey Ullman Show to half-hour episodes) and King of the Hill, Bird wrote and directed The Incredibles despite never before being involved in a Pixar project. Brad Bird earned that opportunity by making The Iron Giant, a fantastic movie with a deep theological message that just missed making this top-50 list. It seems that The Iron Giant impressed enough folks at Pixar that Bird got a chance to make his next film with them. He went out on a limb by making The Incredibles, a cartoon that grown-ups would love.

Pretty much everybody in the world has seen this film as well as some space aliens that are just now receiving a constant video feed since it was released in 2004. Of course there is action and humor and great characters and a great story and impressive animation, but that is the case for pretty much all Pixar films. The thing that makes The Incredibles unique is that it works on two levels: a child can watch it and enjoy it for one reason and a parent can watch it and enjoy it for an entirely different reason... and the two reasons actually complement one another. It could have been that the adult issues took a backseat to the action/humor and the kids got bored, or the action/humor took a backseat to the adult issues and the adults would be left with just another movie that the kids would want to watch 5,000 times on DVD. But it all blends perfectly, making The Incredibles a film that is truly "for the whole family" - which is appropriate since it is about the relationships within a family.

In The Incredibles, each character's superpower was not assigned randomly but ties in to where he/she is in life and to their struggles. Mr. Incredible himself is the strong and courageous hero every dad wants to be... but he is approaching middle age. His wife Elastigirl is able to stretch herself... which she needs in order to "hold her life together" as she tries to raise three kids, support her husband and keep the house clean. Violet, the middle school aged girl, is shy and beginning to figure out who she is... so she naturally can turn invisible and is just learning how to harness her ability to create force fields. Dash, the elementary school aged boy, has legs that don't stop moving and a head full of steam... so he struggles with wanting to show off and not stopping to think before acting. The "normal life struggles" that each character is going through have a direct tie-in to the superpower that Bird gave them.

Some of you might think I am reading in to this too much, but this film was obviously intended to work on two levels - one for kids and one for adults. As proof of this, it is the only Pixar movie to get a PG rating. Plus, Bird himself has a family who supposedly inspired him to write The Incredibles. Bird has gone on record as saying that animation can be used to tell any kind of story, not just stories for children as American animated films and shows tend to be.

The next story that Brad Bird and Pixar will be telling is about a rat in Paris named Ratatouille, scheduled for reason this summer. As you can see from this description on imdb.com, Bird is at it again in making a cartoon that grown-ups will love:

"Remy is a rat, constantly risking life in an expensive French restaurant because of his love of good food, as well as a desire to become a chef. His father and brother do not approve, and would rather stick to the normal rat life of eating garbage. The family can't be split up, but who is in the right? The one wanting the dangerous but better life, or the ones who believe in an easy, if somewhat lesser, life?"

John Lasseter, who is now the Creative Director at Disney after the Pixar merge says about Ratatouille: "It is a wonderful story about following your passions when all the world is against you. A rat to a kitchen is death; a kitchen to a rat is death."

You can check out the trailer here: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0382932/trailers-screenplay-E27826-10-2

Normally a cartoon about a rat would not appeal to me, but with Brad Bird's name attached to it, I'm going.