Every single last thing about The Incredibles is absolutely, um…amazing. What The Incredibles accomplishes is really unlike anything else that’s ever been done with animation before, even by Pixar themselves. The animation is fantastic. Everything is finely drawn and animated. There’s always something to look at. Textures, lighting, it’s all superb.

The script is amazing. It’s not quite as clever or as rich as Finding Nemo, however, and I highly doubt it will receive a nomination for best original screenplay like Nemo did, but the fact that it’s a possibility is, um, extraordinary. The script is extraordinarily mature, that’s for sure.

Mr. Incredible (Craig T. Nelson) has married Elastigirl (Holly Hunter) and both have given up the superhero life in order to raise a family. They discover that raising a family isn’t any easier that saving the world and each struggle with various trials. Mr. Incredible is struggling at work and longs to be a superhero again, Elastigirl uses her powers to try to reign in her children who include Dash (Spencer Fox), who’s having problems at school, and Violet (Sarah Vowell), whose entering a typical teenage depression.

Their struggles are startlingly real. Even though they’re superheroes, they’re absolutely ordinary – and that ordinariness is part of the problem. The children struggle with being forced to be “ordinary” when they could be using superpowers to shine. The conflict is eventually resolved with a sort of compromise and a suggestion by the film that superpowers ought neither be exploited nor ignored.

In terms of the larger conflict, the family eventually find a common enemy in the disgruntled Syndrome (Jason Lee), and realize they need each other for success as they each use their unique superpowers to defeat their foe. There’s a lot of action, and the story sometimes seems to take a back seat to action creating opportunities, as opposed to Finding Nemo which was thoroughly theme driven. The story’s still strong though, and just as fun.

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