The Incredibles: Superheroes Entertain, But Not as Much as Toys and Monsters

I love Pixar. So much that I can't believe I still haven't seen Ratatouille, which looks glorious and which comes so highly recommended. Over the Thanksgiving weekend, however, I did manage to catch The Incredibles, the previous Pixar flick also written and directed by Brad Bird. I'd seen it before, in the theater, and although I enjoyed it, I didn't like it as much as the others and couldn't quite understand the heaps of acclaim it seemed to be getting.

After seeing it again, I'd still rank it at the bottom of my Pixar list, but that doesn't mean The Incredibles isn't fantastic. As a send-up of spy and superhero films, it delivers plenty of laughs, though the jokes generally seem to aim at an older audience. This aspect of the film is both an asset and a weakness. It's sly and clever, but some of it probably goes over the heads of children.

Not only is the overall tone of the movie rather more sophisticated than would be expected for an audience of youngsters, the film gets pretty dark at times, and there is cartoonish violence aplenty. Nothing too graphic, but the fact that these are actual people as opposed to toys, monsters, cars or any of a variety of small animals makes the mayhem feel that much more ominous. And good as the animation is, these heroes in hiding just aren't as much fun to look at as Woody, Sully or Mater.

Still, the Incredibles, known to the rest of civilization as the Parrs, are an engaging family. Dad (Craig T. Nelson) is overweight and unfulfilled, dreaming of his glory days as a superhero in his prime while he fritters away his life in a tiny cubicle, attempting to actually help his clients despite the disapproval of his explosive, diminutive boss (Wallace Shawn). His wife Elastigirl (Holly Hunter) is determined to allow the family to blend in, even if it means never making use of their unique abilities. Hyperactive young Dash (Spencer Fox) races to and fro, always full of energy and frustration that he doesn't have a decent outlet for it, and brooding Violet (Sarah Vowell) feels invisible even when she isn't cloaking herself. Only infant Jack-Jack seems to boast no remarkable powers, but he has time to grow into that sort of thing...

Also integral to the plot are Frozone (Samuel L. Jackson), the hip buddy of Mr. Incredible who does all sorts of nifty tricks involving the freezing of water, and Syndrome (Jason Lee), whose poisonous attitudes toward Our Hero were shaped during an unfortunate encounter years earlier. Bird himself joins the party as savvy fashion designer Edna Mode, who is eager to give this family a new look for this phase of their lives.

The animation is eye-catching, though again, I just can't quite get used to Pixar's humans. It's a movie that almost seems like it would've worked just as well as a live action movie, and I'm not sure how I feel about that. As with most Pixar efforts, this isn't a musical, but Michael Giacchino, who also composed the music for LOST, created a fun and evocative score.

The Incredibles are a family with a very unusual dynamic, since they must juggle superpowers with the desire to remain in cognito, the urge to help humanity with the need for some quality time on the home front. They're the average middle class family in many ways, one of which is demonstrated in a hilarious scene in which Elastigirl plays back-seat driver as her husband attempts to maneuver their car through heavy traffic. I think I laughed more the second time around and was a little less shocked by how sinister the plot occasionally became. The Incredibles is quite the entertaining ride. It's just not quite as incredible as its esteemed company.

A Pretty Impressive Capper, But Vader Should Still Seek Revenge for Defamation of Character

“Star Wars is the defining event of our lives,” my dad remarked to my mom on our way home from seeing Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. “The first one came out just as we entered adulthood, and the last one just as our kids are entering adulthood.” It’s a formidable thought. Nearly 30 years for George to complete his legacy. Unless he still has the triple trilogy in mind… It’s strange, setting up a series in such a way that everyone knows how the story ends long before it begins. We all knew that this third installment leading directly into the epic that started it all would be by far the darkest of the six. It makes for a slightly surreal experience, knowing that everything has to go wrong, watching in revulsion but stopping just short of willing it not to happen because you know it’s required for the glorious events of the original trilogy. In the end it begs the question: Did we really need these prequels in the first place? I’m not a hard-core enough fan to answer that question. But I recognize this is the end of an era, and I celebrate it by making it my 600th review – one hundred for each movie if you like. No matter what, you have to admit George Lucas had a pretty impressive accomplishment.

So, how was it? Well, I missed the mayhem of opening night, though my brother and our exchange student got in on the fun. My parents and I saw it three days later. We still had to buy our tickets three hours in advance and wait in line for an hour after turning in our tickets in order to be assured decent seats. Aside from a few light sabers, ours was not a costumed audience. Only one man had the full regalia, a fellow who’d been there for the first showing (and maybe every night after) in his $2700 Darth Vader costume. I want one. Not really. I’d rather have a life-size R2-D2. Anyway, we were treated to a rather unusual occurrence that night. Just before the previews were about to start, the lights went up and a man, armed with the disclaimer that he had nothing to do with the movie, announced that he was attending with his girlfriend, who was very special to him, and he requested that she join him in front of the screen. Then he proceeded to get down on one knee and propose, and her affirmative answer was met with rapturous applause. Oddly enough, I think it was the loudest applause of the night…

Trouble is, Revenge of the Sith is rarely a movie that makes you cheer. It’s like a Shakespearean tragedy, with Anakin (Hayden Christiansen) in the spot occupied by Othello and MacBeth and other anti-heroes who leave the audience groaning and thinking again and again, You moron! Anakin is a decent guy at the start of the film, teaming up with master Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) to battle evil robots while rushing to the defense of indispensable little R2-D2 (Kenny Baker) when his mentor maligns him. His passion is his undoing, however. In spite of Yoda’s warnings to release himself from attachment to anything he fears to lose, he is increasingly driven by paranoia brought on by a series of disturbing dreams about his beloved secret bride Padme (Natalie Portman). Christiansen doesn’t bug me as much in this movie as he did in Attack of the Clones, but he’s still too moody and whiny to be very likable, or very impressive. I can put up with Luke’s petulance at the outset of A New Hope; at least he comes across as a sweet guy. I don’t know how I wanted Anakin to be, but I think I preferred having his origins ambiguous. Darth Vader is arguably the most formidable movie villain in cinematic history, and I find him cheapened by an inadequate history. And while we are supposed to believe that the intensity of his love for Padme is so great that he is willing to all but destroy the Jedi order to ensure her safety, they always seem wooden in their scenes together. It doesn’t help that they’re still hampered by the occasional excruciating dialogue. If my husband had just told me that he wanted to take over the galaxy, I’d like to think I could have come up with something more useful to say than “You’re breaking my heart.”

If Christiansen still lacks chemistry with Portman, he demonstrates it with McGregor. They kick off the film together with a dizzying action sequence at the conclusion of which a light-hearted conversation between Obi-Wan and Anakin reveals just a hint of jealousy that the padawan is outranking his teacher. Theirs is a relationship torn by the tension between affection and ambition. For the most part, we do get the sense Obi-Wan accepts the notion that he is training a Jedi who will become more powerful than him and resents the fact that other members of the council find Anakin less than trustworthy. Anakin, however, is less generous, always grumbling about Obi-Wan standing in the way of what he wants to do. It doesn’t take him long to abandon concern for his master. As Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) leads him further down the path of corruption, Obi-Wan looks more and more like the enemy. McGregor helms most of the film’s truly emotional scenes, most notably the culmination of their climactic battle in which an agonized Obi-Wan is forced to admit once and for all that he has lost his padawan forever. We see a great deal more from McGregor this time around, and I would classify him as a much better actor than Christiansen. It’s just a shame that one of the most beloved Star Wars characters was played by two different actors who’ve seemed almost resentful of the fact that they were involved. I suspect McGregor’s recent comments on his fans may have alienated a few people; I guess he has a hunch now how Sir Alec Guinness felt.

I found it very hard to feel sorry for Anakin throughout the film, even if his initial motivation was noble. It’s sad to see him manipulated by Palpatine, who is perhaps the true star of the film as McDiarmid takes him from benign presence who nonetheless seems to possess a slightly sinister air to fully disclosed evil emperor. But it seems good judgment should have tipped him off early on that Palpatine was up to no good. He recoils at Palpatine’s request to kill Count Dooku (Christopher Lee, who must be getting tired of playing second-tier villains with somewhat embarrassing death scenes) and refuses to acquiesce to his demand that – supposedly in the interests of time – they leave Obi-Wan behind. But apparently there are years of influence at work that we don’t see on screen. Palpatine is truly frightening for most of the film, evoking a moral crisis in Anakin, particularly when he announces his familiarity with the dark side and offers to pass on his knowledge. I found the altercation in the theater unsatisfactory on Christiansen’s end, or at least whoever wrote the dialogue. Palpatine’s fine, but Anakin again seems stiff and unconvincing. The scene sets us up for the moment that should demonstrate to him once and for all that this guy is extremely bad news but instead seems to eradicate any trace of a decent human being in young Skywalker. Perhaps he sees himself as party to such a calamity that he already deems himself irredeemable. All he supposedly cares about now is Padme, though once he begins to carry out Palpatine’s orders it can hardly be said that thoughts of her have any influence over his actions. The last indication in the film that she still means anything to him is so excruciating, one wonders how James Earl Jones could have been convinced to decimate his dignity by agreeing to it.

Mace Windu (Samuel L. Jackson) embodies the struggle for the Jedi to remain relevant in a time of great change. He is a formidable force, rather like the man who plays him. I find it amusing that he talked Lucas into giving him a purple light saber so he’d stand out and that he actually included a stipulation in his contract that his character had to have a noteworthy death scene. Visually, it’s pretty riveting. Emotionally, it’s the turning point of the whole film. Yoda (Frank Oz) spends much of the movie hobnobbing with the Wookiees, and while I was looking forward to this aspect of the film, it didn’t really satisfy me. For one thing, I imagined the planet as an idyllic locale, and it might have been if not for the fact that it was a war zone. The Wookiees almost looked like Klingons with all their ammo and war decorations, and when it came right down to it the whole interlude at their planet seemed to serve little purpose other than to get Yoda out of the line of fire for a while. Chewy (Peter Mayhew) shows up, but we don’t get any sense of his personality except that he’s on Yoda’s side. So that was a bit of a disappointment, but Yoda never fails to come through for me. He’s one of my three favorite characters in the trilogy, all of which conveniently appear in the prequels portrayed by the same actors. I still prefer the swamp-dwelling Yoda to the more dignified personage of the prequels, but he’s still the same delightful character, and he radiates wisdom and heart in a film whose protagonist stands in sore need of both.

The droids are my other favorites. There is precious little to be seen of C-3PO, though when he is on screen he certainly attracts attention with his ultra-shiny new frame. Generally he’s a great chatterbox, and I could have used more of his silly comments. I was also rather perplexed by his appearance just after Anakin departs to subvert the inevitable altercation between Palpatine and Mace Windu. It cuts to Padme, and C-3PO waddles up to her, and then it cuts to a completely different scene. Those five or ten seconds seemed completely superfluous, and I was left with the impression that a scene had been deleted and due to sloppy editing or a teaser for the DVD or whatever, they left the beginning of it intact. R2-D2 shines in Sith, however, particularly at the beginning. He is as much a hero as Anakin or Obi-Wan in the opening minutes, and he handles his sticky situation with typical good humor. Most of the movie’s funniest moments involve him. When we bought our tickets, we received a complementary copy of Flick, a Cinemark magazine, and this issue focused entirely on Star Wars. One page advertises various available merchandise, including life-size cardboard stand-ups that come equipped with a chip allowing them to speak quotes from the movie. One of the figures is R2-D2, which begs the question, of what significant quote my favorite little garbage can-like being could boast. Still, he’s awfully expressive for a guy who speaks exclusively in a series of unintelligible squeaks, beeps and whistles, and you can never really accuse him of having a lame line.

So did Sith deliver all that I expected? I can’t say for sure, though a hunch still tells me no. Phantom Menace was a lot more fun, and I rather liked our feeling of jubilation as we exited the theater. It seemed the only appropriate reaction to the end of Sith was pensiveness. But it wasn’t any more depressing than I expected, and less violent than I thought it would be. It was visually stunning, though it lacked the beauty of Naboo as revealed in different forms in the first and second installments. The dizzying chases through space and sky threatened to give me vertigo, while Palpatine passed on the creepy crawlies every time he appeared on screen. Anakin, too, mainly in the horrific scenes following Mace Windu’s death that are as distressing for what they don’t show as what they do. The most tragic moment for me in the entire film was when a young Jedi, eyes wide with fear and trust, turned to Anakin for protection and received something entirely unexpected. In ten seconds, that young man packed an emotional whallop infinitely greater than what Jake Lloyd was able to accomplish in the course of an entire movie.

I won’t say that Sith impressed me as much as I thought it could have, but all in all it was a pretty affecting film and a mostly satisfactory link between Episodes I and II and the original trilogy. But I still think Darth Vader will never be quite as cool as he was before the prequels exposed Anakin as a character most undeserving of being the subject of a grandiose 6-part space epic.

Anakin and Amidala Are No Han and Leia

While I found some aspects of Phantom Menace to be rather disappointing, I still looked forward to the arrival of the second installment of the Star Wars prequel in theaters. The stirrings of foreboding occurred when I heard that the title would be Attack of the Clones - very B-movie-ish, if you ask me. As it turned out, the flaws I perceived in Phantom Menace melted away in comparison with its sequel. My brother tells me my feeble mind is incapable of grasping the intricacies of a plot he claims is easy to follow. Whatever the case may be, I had a hard time figuring out what was going on when I watched Attack of the Clones.

The bulk of the film concerns two separate plotlines. In one, Obi-Wan (Ewan McGregor) endeavors to discover the source of a poison dart used to kill now-Senator Amidala’s (Natalie Portman) would-be assassin. In the process, he learns of the existence of a clone army built for the use of the Republic, while the audience gets a bit of background on the mysterious Boba Fett. Meanwhile, Anakin (Hayden Christiansen) is left behind to protect Amidala, on whom he has had a crush since their meeting during the first film. Though Anakin is now nearly 20, Amidala still thinks of him as the child she last saw ten years earlier, while he yearns to be so much more. When she tells him, “Ani, you’ll always be that little boy I knew on Tattooine,” it’s the last thing he wants to hear. Tied in with this is Chancellor Palpatine’s (Ian McDiarmid) gradual corruption and the threat of Count Dooku (Christopher Lee), a former Jedi and war-monger. Several other threads run throughout the movie, and when I finished watching the movie for the first time I wasn’t very clear on all that had happened. To be precise, my feelings could best be summed up by the words of C-3PO in one of the film’s few funny moments: “I’m so confused.”

McGregor continues to do a solid but ultimately rather boring job as Obi-Wan. Not his fault, they just don’t give him that much to work with. He does have a few good moments with Anakin, including a pretty impressive speeder chase through the multi-level streets of a Las Vegas-style city in Coruscant. Maybe part of the trouble is that these people are a part of an established order and they always seem to know what they’re doing. There’s not the high level of uncertainty and trial and error that Luke, Leia and Han had.

But as in Phantom Menace, Obi-Wan is still one of the strongest characters in the film. Mace Windu (Samuel L. Jackson) gets more screen time in here, which he deserves, while Jar Jar (Ahmed Best) gets less, much to the satisfaction of his legions of anti-fans. There’s far too little of the droids, but they shine in their on-screen moments, as does Yoda (Frank Oz), who is afforded the chance to display some humor and get into a memorable light saber duel.

It should have been interesting to see the origins of Boba Fett (Daniel Logan), but the film failed to make me care. Or perhaps I was just too distracted by what was going on with Anakin to be properly moved by that storyline, which does build to a traumatic finish. Palpatine seems increasingly sinister and Dooku is appropriately intimidating, but neither made a huge impression on me. In fact, what I recall most about Attack of the Clones has nothing to do with the clones at all, but rather concerns the budding romance between Amidala and Anakin. I find it odd that Darth Vader is probably the most formidable, memorable character in the original Star Wars trilogy, and yet in the prequel he always seems to be the weakest link. I’m beginning to wonder whether an actor can be faulted for failing to impress when forced to deliver such uninspiring lines. From where I’m standing, though, it looks like Jake Lloyd was a lousy kiddie Anakin and Christiansen is a lousy post-adolescent Anakin.

He glowers his way through the movie, his dialogue stilted throughout. “Now that I’m with you again,” Anakin tells Amidala, “I’m in agony.” So am I, listening to him talk. What’s worse, Amidala falls for him. She spends the first third of the movie remembering him fondly as the boy who helped her out of a jam, the middle being creeped out by his lewd and very un-Jedi-like glances, and the end declaring her undying love for him. Where did that come from? Their on-screen chemistry is next to nil, and their romantic arc is barely believable. It certainly pales in comparison to the gradual development of Han and Leia’s relationship, complete with impassioned insults and several life-threatening situations. It’s bad enough for Anakin to be utterly infatuated with her, but there’s no reasonable explanation for her declaration, “I truly, deeply love you.” They haven’t spent enough time together for that, and most of that time sweet little Ani’s been acting like a creep.

Attack of the Clones is visually impressive, but there are far fewer beautiful scenes and absurd creatures in this film. Those that do appear stand out, particularly Dex, a greasy but cuddly cafe owner with whom Obi-Wan shares a companionable scene. There’s also less humor. Second installments in trilogies tend to be very dark and depressing, and aside from that infamous carbonite scene, Attack of the Clones is much more of a downer than Empire Strikes Back. Actually, that’s not strictly true, since we care more about the characters in Empire; Attack is more “blah” than distressing. Still, it sets a necessary stage for the third film, which hopefully will be the best of the three, though it promises a great deal of death and disorder. My favorite moments in Attack all involved Yoda, C-3PO and R2-D2, so Chewbacca’s presence in Revenge of the Sith is a good sign. Let’s just hope they get Anakin some better writers…

Unbreakable Breaks Shymalan's Winning Streak

After that rather ominous title, I should clarify that I did not think Unbreakable was a bad movie. Strange, certainly, but I can deal with that. No, it's just that Shymalan's second blockbuster paled in comparison to the utterly mesmerizing The Sixth Sense. Bruce Willis once again stars, this time as security guard David Dunn, who is a decent guy but certainly not as likable as the soft-hearted psychologist Malcolm Crowe. He, too, suffers from marital problems, but they do not arise from over-dedication to his job, though absence does play into it. In his first scene we watch him slyly slip his wedding ring into his pocket in order to flirt with the foxy lady sitting next to him on the train.

Moments later, the trains crashes, and David walks away unscathed, the only passenger to survive the wreck. This miraculous event catches the eye of Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson), a comic book fanatic with brittle bone disease. He believes that Dunn may be a super-hero, and he summons the security guard to his store to discuss his theory. Unfortunately, Dunn's impressionable son (Spencer Treat Clark), who worships his father, believes Elijah's theory and becomes determined to prove it.

Meanwhile, Dunn's wife, a nearly unrecognizable Robin Wright Penn (she looks so much...older than she did in Princess Bride and Forrest Gump), is finding it increasingly hard to talk to her husband and becomes very worried when Elijah's super-hero talk starts rubbing off on her son. As in The Sixth Sense, it's the kid that finally gets Bruce's character to see himself as he really is, but I'm afraid that Clark was a little too grating for me. He came off as rather pathetic and whiny, although much of that probably had to do with the dialogue he was given.

The most memorably bad scene in this movie, in my mind, occurs at the kitchen table, when David's son informs him that he has a gun and that he intends to shoot him to prove that he is invincible. What follows is supposed to be tense and suspenseful but comes out rather comical as the parents plead for the weapon. "We don't shoot friends," Mom admonishes, to which he protests, "I'll only shoot him once!"

Still, the movie has a rather intriguing premise, and it's fun to watch Dunn uncover the layers of his past in order to accept his present. The movie almost ends on a feel-good note with father and son sharing their incredible secret, but Shymalan is apparently a big fan of the twist ending. This one is sure to surprise, but while the end of The Sixth Sense left me with a peaceful, fulfilled sort of feeling, this ending was disappointing and unsettling.

As with The Sixth Sense, I think a Horror classification is inappropriate. There's nothing too scary here, and there are only a couple violent scenes. Perhaps if The Sixth Sense had not blown me away like it did, I would not have set the same expectations for this movie. I doubted I would like it as much, especially with the absence of Osment, but I was intrigued to see what Shymalan would come up with next. It was a decent movie, a good movie even, but not a great movie, and while I don't regret seeing it in the theater, I wouldn't spend another $5 to see it again.