The Incredibles (U)

Before The Incredibles opened, the pundits were banging on about how this was going to be the film that would see Pixar's Toy Story, Monsters, Inc and Finding Nemo bandwagon finally grind to a halt. No one could believe that a story about a retired superhero couple and their kids would really grab audiences. It had no talking animals, no toys, no buddy-movie flourishes. What's more, it was the brainchild of Iron Giant helmer Brad Bird, recruited by Pixar to inject new blood into their operation. Everyone agreed: "It Simply Could Not Succeed."

Shows what pundits know, eh? Because there's only word for The Incredibles: irresistible. From the three-year-olds ga-ga-ing about Superdaddy to thirtysomething fanboys obsessing about the post-Watchmen comic-book references, the film is impossible to dislike.

Beautiful, funny, multi-layered and exciting, this is Pixar at close to its best. Only close? Well, yes. Some of the supporting figures are a little bit throwaway - you could slice the Samuel L Jackson-voiced Frozone out of the movie and leave barely a scar - and the ending is a touch stretched. But the gleaming, widescreen, 3D pluses more than make up for the niggly minuses.

The main characters are gloriously real, the plot is slick and the action sequences engender genuine sweaty-palmed excitement. As superhero films go (heck, as action movies go) only Spider-Man 2 betters this, while upcomers like Batman Begins and Fantastic Four face a mighty challenge if they're even to match it.

DVD Extras:

Samuel L Jackson, Craig T Nelson, Holly Hunter... By anyone's standards, The Incredibles has a great voice cast. Don't expect to hear anything from them here, though. As far as the behind the scenes stuff on this two-disc set is concerned, they may as well not exist.There's acres of material explaining how facial expressions were created, snippets from Brad Bird's overblown video diary, a commentary which soon degenerates into Bird telling you which animator did which two-second segment and endless footage of people arguing in production meetings. But there's nothing from any of the star voices - a strange omission indeed.Strange, too, is the way they skate over the inspiration for the story and characters. Did all those comics about retired superheroes, something of a graphic novel mini-industry over the past few decades, actually have no influence on them? Were the Incredibles really not inspired at all by Marvel Comics' Fantastic Four, two of whose members have identical powers (stretching and invisibility)? You have to wonder if the legal advisors haven't told Brad Bird et al to stay schtum about that kind of thing for fear of being savaged by copyright lawyers.There are also assorted unfinished deleted scenes, a gallery of design sketches and easter egg extras. The best bits on the second disc, though, are undoubtedly the two shorts. Boundin' is the strange Country&Western one with the bouncing sheep that preceded The Incredibles in cinemas. But it's aced by Jack-Jack Attack, which shows the problems of babysitting a superpowered tot in hilarious detail. It reminds you that the mind-numbing grind of making animation happen - all too boringly displayed here - isn't the best thing about Pixar's work. It's the witty, gorgeous end product that matters.

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