The Incredibles

I was explaining to Frode and Emily the other night why it is so hard not to give this film a straight A. What exactly is wrong with it?

"I think The Little Mermaid was better", Emily then cut in - not a film I've seen, but somehow I won't be rushing out to rent it on the strength of that recommendation alone. Let's assume she saw The Little Mermaid on the big screen about 15 years ago. Maybe for the child's imagination, any number of Disney movies make superior fodder to The Incredibles, but for us nostalgic adults, it's out there on its own, peerless, serving as a reminder to people of a certain generation what 'live action' cinema has lost in the past thirty or forty years.

I related to Frode and Emily why I thought computer animations were so popular these days across all generations. Just remember Brad Pitt in Troy - there's such a thick layer of celebrity veiling the Achiles experience. Not so with animated characters. Holly Hunter excepted, not even the voices in The Incredibles were that familiar. Frode is right that the most successful animations are the ones where the underlying stars don't poke through too much. And it's why I found Shark Tale so much more enjoyable in the Spanish dub. So, these on-screen beings are strangely more real to us than characters mediated through familiar personalities. And we saw in Team America, that even Thunderbirds puppets can be more expressive than many that grace the current Hollywood A-list.

Former Simpsons Director Brad Bird locates the incognito super-family in 60s suburbia. Mr Incredible, now plain old cubicle occupant Bob Parr, has been forced to live like a combination of Homer Simpson, Fred Flinstone and Dilbert after a series of opportunistic law-suits. The setting and the themes reminded me of Bewitched, where the supernaturally-talented have to try to keep up an appearance of conformity. This allows Bird to introduce some gentle political satire. The 60s retro theme is kept up throughout, with especially loud echoes of You Only Live Twice, and the Bond soundtracks of John Barry.

It's the kind of movie that restores that childlike desire to go straight back to the beginning and watch it again. (And not because, like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind you didn't fully understand it first time round!) Indeed, the fact that you can enjoy any ten minute segement as a piece of exhilarating standalone movie entertainment was confirmed to me when I wandered into Virgin on the day of the DVD launch and found myself unable to go up the escalator before I'd finished watching the final fight against the robot.