Image copyright © by Marcus Trahan

The Incredibles

(2004)

Everything I expected it to be, and even a bit more. One of the more adult-themed feature-length animations I’ve ever seen, except maybe The Triplets of Belleville. The animation is everything you’ve come to expect, and the story is even better than Finding Nemo, in my opinion. Of course, that’s from an older viewer. It has more to do with family/work conflicts than with actual “super-heroes.” Also, it is scathing in its view of how anybody who is “special” is made to pay, how individuality is so often weeded out and crushed. And the very, very sad fact that no good deed will go unpunished if you let lawyers take over your society. The music was reminiscent of the John Barry and Henry Mancini scores of the ’60s and ’70s. One other thing worth noting is that during the closing credits they used what looked like computer-era “pencil tests” behind the endless crawl of names: just simple shapes and primary colors of action we’d already seen.