"Incredibles 2" Review

Pixar's sixth release, 2004's The Incredibles, was their last unqualified great movie. They followed it with the massive stumble that was Cars and their subsequent output has wildly varied in quality from uneven (Up, Ratatouille, WALL-E), overrated (Inside Out, Toy Story 3) to downright mediocre, unnecessary and awful (Cars sequels, Finding Dory, The Good Dinosaur, Monsters University). For some reason Pixar has lost its way in telling focused, coherent stories - I blame the tragic passing of story guy Joe Ranft in 2005 (note the date) which gutted their story sense - and this inability to focus ultimately turns Incredibles 2 into a case of "We waited 14 years for this?"

Picking up literally where the first movie ended with the Underminer's appearance, we witness the Parr family unsuccessfully attempt to thwart his bank heist and minimize destruction. While things would've been much worse without their intervention, it only reinforces the opinions that led to Supers being outlawed in the first place. Even worse, the debacle leads to the government department of Super Relocation to be shut down, meaning the Parrs, whose house was destroyed in the climax of the first film, only have two weeks left in the motel before they're on the street.

Fortunately, benefactors appear in the form of Winston and Evelyn Deavor (voiced by Bob Odenkirk in full Saul Goodman mode and Catherine Keener), siblings whose DEVTECH company they inherited from their deceased parents. She's the Steve Wozniak tech genius and he's the Steve Jobs salesman who has a scheme to bring Supers back to respectability by putting Elastigirl (Holly Hunter) out front in a campaign to restore respectability. This bruises Mr. Incredible's (Craig T. Nelson) macho ego, but he's got too long a track record of collateral damage in his heroics, so he's benched with Mr. Mom duty, watching the kids, including the multi-powered Jack-Jack, in a big Sixties Space Age-styled mansion loaned by the Deavors.

With Helen out of town on her mission tracking a villain named the Screenslaver, who can hypnotize people with a pattern on any display screen, the movie wanders from Bob bumbling as a caretaker (because men, amirite?), daughter Violet's (Sarah Vowell) boy troubles caused by her date's mind being erased Men In Black style, Dash's (Huck Milner) problems with new math, Jack-Jack's random power set, a new bunch of Supers recruited by the Deavors, and so forth.

Though only a few minutes longer than its predecessor, Incredibles 2 feels simultaneously padded out and overstuffed. I saw a review that described it as feeling like a compilation of plots from an Incredibles TV series and that's spot on. The disjointed story problems appear from the very first moment as we're introduced to the mind-wiped boy scene, then jumping back to the Underminer battle followed by the family being cut loose by the government and Bob's mentioning he may've seen Violet unmasked. Why not just have the mind-wipe scene after the boy is mentioned? It wouldn't change how subsequent details play out. When the inevitable twist appears, it's such a non-surprise as to be surprising how weak the reveal is and how little sense the Screenslaver's plan makes.

Equally problematic is the decision to make Bob a passive bystander to what's happening. In the first movie, he and Frozone (Samuel L. Jackson) were sneaking out and listening to the police scanner for action. When recruited by Syndrome's assistant, he snuck off behind Helen's back to get a new supersuit and to get back into shape. Even though the events of this movie are only days after the first one's, he's got none of the old mojo and rapidly devolves into a sleep-deprived, emasculated mess. Frozone barely factors much either.

Brad Bird's track record took a savage bruising with the shockingly cynical flop Tomorrowland and one can't help wonder if the damage of that experience combined with being forced to slink back to sequelize so long afterwards - though it was 11, 12 and 13 years respectively between Monsters, Toy Story and Finding Nemo sequels - on top of Bird being 46 then and 60 now has led to the lackluster consistency of Incredibles 2.

On the plus side, the rendering of CGI has made the requisite leaps forward, the action scenes are all crisp and dynamic with great uses of power and the Jack-Jack stuff is a hoot, particularly his initial faceoff with a raccoon (really!), though anyone who saw the Jack-Jack Attack short on the first Incredibles DVD will experience deja vu.

Despite suspicions, I don't think the disappointing Incredibles 2 is as much a matter of Disney's alleged demands for social justice agendas to be inserted, but more like Bird's uninspired storytelling, muddled themes, and Pixar's general slumping into a lazy sequel factory. Joe Ranft, oh how we miss you!

Score: 6/10. Rent the Blu-ray.