Pixar continues to put out the best in animation, but there has been one sequel that fans have been begging for since 2004 when the first one hit theaters and that is for the Incredibles. Now after all these years we are finally getting it with the aptly titled Incredibles 2 featuring the voices of Holly Hunter, Craig T. Nelson, Sarah Vowell, Huck Miller, Samuel L. Jackson, Brad Bird, Bob Odenkirk, Catherine Keaner, Jonathan Banks, Sophia Bush, and Isabella Rossellini, but does it manage to live up to the hype or is it coming too late to save the day?
Incredibles 2 follows everyone’s favorite family of superheroes back in action, but this time Helen is in the spotlight, leaving Bob at home with Violet and Dash to navigate the day-to-day heroics of “normal” life. It’s a tough transition for everyone, made tougher by the fact that the family is still unaware of baby Jack-Jack’s emerging superpowers. When a new villain hatches a brilliant and dangerous plot, the family and Frozone must find a way to work together again—which is easier said than done, even when they’re all Incredible. As a big fan of the original I was worried if they could capture the same magic once again and I am happy to say they did. This wasn’t the story I was hoping for, but after seeing it I found it to be exactly what I needed for this family’s latest adventure. The trailers looked to me like they were jumping in on the female empowerment bandwagon to give the film over to Elasitgirl and while she does get most of the action that isn’t fully truthful. The reasoning for her taking the lead makes total sense to the story and is actually pretty funny to why.
This series has always been about family and although there is plenty of action the keep the story of their family front and center. While Elastigirl is getting most of the action time, some of the best moments are actually the home stuff with Jack Jack and Mr. Incredible as he tries to deal with being a stay home dad. Sure there are a lot of rehashed jokes and nothing overly new this time around, but I still found myself having a lot of fun. The second half of the film gets more into the super hero action bringing in some new heroes and villains that are great fun to watch and ones that I hope we get to see more of in the future.
As with all Pixar films this one offers up more beautiful animation full of vibrant colors, detail and great overall design. I know there will be some fans that might be disappointed that wanted something more than what they went with for this story, especially with this amount of wait time, but I think they still delivered. Hopefully this does well enough to get another entry a lot sooner this time around, but either way we at least have two entries with everyone’s favorite super hero family.
Review by Bobby Blakey - Bobby reviews way more movies on his own website than the genre-specific ones I post here. Check out Bobby's awesome website and his live show he co-hosts with his wife, Drusilla, at Hollywood Matrimony.
