movies: incredibles 2

I'll admit that The Incredibles isn't really in my top 5 list of Pixar movies, but they have absolutely outdone themselves with Incredibles 2.

Also, lets put there out there right now at the beginning of this review... baby Jack-Jack legitimately steals every single scene that he's in, and I'm 100% here for all of it.

Going back a little... the first movie is, without a shadow of a doubt, Bob/Mr Incredible's movie. The story is all about him, plot gets moved by him, the others are only mobilised to save him. There's a B story with the rest of them, sure, but it's basically the Mr Incredible Show.

This time around it's Helen/Elastigirl/Mrs Incredible's movie.

With Bob being a stay-at-home dad as the B story (and it's probably a more well thought-out B story than Helen's was in the original).

The story is solid action adventure, and it's nice to see the female superhero taking charge, especially given that Elastigirl is capable of being much more subtle.

It also feels perhaps less "on message" than other Pixar movies. I mean, yes, there's definitely some "hey, taking care of children is hard work", equality stuff going on, but it's just a function of the story.

This isn't a movie that's going to make anybody cry (I don't think).

It's also SUPER obvious who the villain is. I mean, the moment the character appeared on screen I though "oh, so you're the villain then". I don't know whether they thought they were being clever and disguising it... and there were a couple of instances where I thought I was wrong, but no, turned out the the great reveal wasn't so much a reveal as a "well, dur".

But that didn't bother me to be honest.

Like the first one, the movie has that cool retro-future 50's vibe to everything... which somehow seems even more apparent this time around, perhaps because they're in much better looking locations overall.

And even though this movie starts right as the previous one finishes, the character models have definitely been given a spruce up... the most obvious of which is Dash, who has much more obvious freckles and cooler hair than he did in the first movie. He also looks a tiny bit older, which is weird, since it's all one time frame.

Oh... and the Edna Mode scenes... pure genius.

Also, the short that precedes the movie, Bao, is lovely but very weird... at least until it all comes together and makes sense at the end.

yani's rating: 4 domino masks out of 5