Mr. Movie review: ‘Incredibles 2’, finally, the sequel
‘Incredibles 2’
“Incredibles 2” picks up the story of the Parr family at the end of “The Incredibles.” Mr. Incredible and his beautiful bride, Elastigirl and their two super-powered children are off to capture the villain Underminer.
Actually, the two kids are left to babysit their toddler sibling Jack-Jack. One of the film’s running jokes is one kid tricking the other into watching the boy in order to join the super hero action.
The Underminer chase ends in a fiasco. Disaster on the city’s streets leads to more criticism of super heroes, a shutdown of their government relocation program and the family getting exiled to a cheap motel. With no job prospects on the horizon, they are desperate to find an alternative.
The alternative — it turns out — comes to them.
A wealthy industrialist and promoter wants to make super heroes popular. His PR people say Elastigirl is an easier sell to the public than Mr. Incredible. So she becomes the face of super heroes everywhere. He takes the guys-ought-to-be-bringing-in-the-family-income ego blow and ends up doing traditional mom stuff.
Some of the mom bits are pretty funny.
You have this hulking guy acting emasculated and having to deal with homework and struggling like many parents to with things like the new math. His question is profound. What’s wrong with the old math? That is — of course — a topic for another day. To the subject at hand, Mr. Incredible also has to help his daughter Violet with her first romantic disappointment.
He does it badly.
And then there’s raising Jack-Jack. The baby begins to demonstrate — gasp — super powers. It’s a unique set of problems for a man besieged by them when he really wants to be out chasing bad guys.
Pixar genius Brad Bird writes and directs. He did the first film, won an Oscar with it and another for “Ratatouille.” After looking for more “mature” projects and doing the live action bombs “Tomorrowland” in 2015 and 2011’s “Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol,” Bird has returned to his animation roots.
That leads to the elephant in the room. Why wait 14-years to release a sequel? When it comes to animated flicks, Bird is an expert. But in this case, I’d say he sort of knows what he’s doing.
I’ll explain the “sort of” comment in a bit.
The original cast does a reprise and, as they did in the first film, have a blast with their parts. Both Holly Hunter and Craig T. Nelson — who give voice to Elastigirl and Mr. Incredible — are forced to play it straight. Nelson, however, doubles as the film’s straight man and is the fulcrum that most of the comedy revolves around. Sara Vowell and Huck Milner do the kids and Samuel L. Jackson plays the family friend Frozone.
Their job is to toss out comedy zingers. However, the best lines are the non-lines done by Eli Fucile who gives voice to Jack-Jack.
A quick piece of trivia. Underminer is voiced by the ubiquitous John Ratzenburger who has been cast in a small role in all of the Pixar films starting with “Toy Story” in 1995.
Back to Bird. Elastigirl’s story isn’t so fun and when it comes right down to it, outside of a few flashes of humor, Mr. Incredible’s doing Mr. Mom isn’t much of a good time either.
This is where the “sort of” comment about Bird comes into play. When “Incredibles 2” is good, it’s really good. However, the movie is too long. Animated features rarely run more than 90 to 100 minutes. This one is two-minutes under two-hours so a lot of the plot seems like padding.
In fact, if not for the fun of Jack-Jack’s emerging superpowers the second and third acts are a yawner.
The kid steals the movie. Bird lets Jack-Jack behave like a baby. That means laughing, giggling, playing and doing baby things. Jack-Jack even has baby-like temper-tantrums. Starting with an hilarious romp with a raccoon, Jack-Jack’s surprising and often hysterical superpowers give the movie the playfulness it needs to work.
It is those laughs that makes “Incredibles 2” close to — but not quite as — incredible as the “Incredibles.”
Movie name: ‘Incredibles 2’
Director: Brad Bird
Stars: Craig T. Nelson, Holly Hunter, Sara Vowell, Huck Milner, Catherine Keener, Eli Fucile, Samuel L. Jackson, Bob Odenkirk, Isabella Rossellini, Jonathan Banks, John Ratzenberger, Bill Wise, Barry Bostwick, Sophia Bush, Brad BirdMr. Movie rating: 4 stars
Rated PG for mature themes. It’s playing at the Fairchild Cinemas Pasco and Queensgate 12s, at Regal’s Columbia Center 8 and at Walla Walla Grand Cinemas.
5 stars to 4 1/2 stars: Must see on the big screen.
4 stars to 3 1/2 stars: Good film, see it if it’s your type of movie.
3 stars to 2 1/2 stars: Wait until it comes out on DVD.
2 stars to 1 star: Don’t bother.
0 stars: Speaks for itself.
This story was originally published June 14, 2018 at 5:30 PM with the headline "Mr. Movie review: ‘Incredibles 2’, finally, the sequel."