Incred­i­bles 2

When the Incred­i­bles burst onto our screens in 2004, this unruly clan of super­pow­ered mid­dle-Amer­i­cans instant­ly struck a chord with audi­ences around the world. It seems strange, then, that it’s tak­en this long for Pixar to cap­i­talise on their pop­u­lar­i­ty, espe­cial­ly giv­en that in the inter­im three Cars films have been released. Promis­ing­ly, this sequel picks up right where the orig­i­nal left off. As in, sec­onds after the con­clu­sion of The Incred­i­bles.

Pixar are no strangers to tak­ing cal­cu­lat­ed risks, but reunit­ing us with the Parr fam­i­ly exact­ly as they exist­ed 14 years ago feels like a safe move. Incred­i­bles 2 relies heav­i­ly on mil­len­ni­al nos­tal­gia, which per­haps was to be expect­ed – those who were chil­dren when the first film came out may well have kids of their own now. When Bob ​“Mr Incred­i­ble” Parr (Craig T Nel­son), Helen ​“Elasti­girl” (Hol­ly Hunter), Vio­let (Sarah Vow­ell), Dash (Huck­le­ber­ry Mil­ner) and baby Jack-Jack (Eli Fucile) appear on screen – frozen in time – it’s a cosy, Dis­ney-fied sug­ges­tion that noth­ing has changed. Except, every­thing has.

As super­heroes are once again out­lawed, one char­ac­ter remarks sage­ly, ​“Politi­cians don’t under­stand peo­ple who do good just because it’s right. Makes ​‘em ner­vous.” The us-and-them dynam­ic between super­heroes and politi­cians has been played out time and time again in cin­e­ma, with The Dark Knight and Cap­tain Amer­i­ca: Civ­il War among the notable recent exam­ples. In Incred­i­bles 2, Win­ston Deav­or (Bob Odenkirk), an eccen­tric Elon Musk-type bil­lion­aire, attempts to per­suade the pub­lic that they need super­heroes by posi­tion­ing Elasti­girl as the poster hero, show­ing her crime-fight­ing antics from her per­spec­tive through the use of body-mount­ed cameras.

Coin­ci­den­tal­ly (or not) a new vil­lain soon emerges, intent on exploit­ing society’s reliance on tech­nol­o­gy for nefar­i­ous ends. ​“Super­heroes are part of your desire to replace expe­ri­ence with sim­u­la­tion,” he growls. Sit­ting in a cin­e­ma watch­ing a com­put­er-ani­mat­ed film about a fam­i­ly with incred­i­ble pow­ers, one has to won­der if ​‘The Screenslaver’ might have a point.

A con­fronta­tion between Elasti­girl and The Screenslaver makes for one of the film’s stand­out scenes, tak­ing place in a pitch-black room lit by bright strobe light­ing. More for­mal­ly ambi­tious that any­thing Mar­vel or DC have thrown togeth­er recent­ly, it’s a gen­uine­ly impres­sive moment – as awe-inspir­ing and ground­break­ing as the water in Find­ing Nemo, or Sully’s fur in Monster’s Inc.

Mean­while, with Helen out sav­ing the world, Bob is left hold­ing the baby. He’s not thrilled about this, as his whole iden­ti­ty seems to be root­ed in his super pow­ers and per­sona as Mr Incred­i­ble. He also believes that he is a bet­ter super­hero than his wife, and is dumb­found­ed by the sug­ges­tion she could be the one to change the public’s per­cep­tion of super­heroes. He strug­gles to adapt to life as a stay-at-home dad, unable to com­pre­hend Dash’s home­work, or Violet’s boy trou­ble, or get his head around Jack-Jack’s nascent pow­ers. This only real­ly serves to high­light that Helen Parr is a saint, giv­en that she’s man­aged to raise a sur­pris­ing­ly func­tion­al fam­i­ly while main­tain­ing her super identity.

Still, Bob calls in the rein­force­ments, old pal Fro­zone (Samuel L Jack­son) and Edna Mode (Brad Bird), to help him stay on top of things. There’s a sur­pris­ing amount of char­ac­ter devel­op­ment for old Bob, who at one point con­fides in his daugh­ter, ​“I just wan­na be a good dad.” He stays up all night learn­ing how to do Dash’s home­work cor­rect­ly so he can help him out with it. Fam­i­ly remains very much at the heart of Incred­i­bles 2, and that’s where the film’s strength lies.

This is not a per­fect film by any stretch. Its pre­de­ces­sor had a bet­ter vil­lain with a more com­pelling back­sto­ry, and Vio­let and Dash are par­tic­u­lar­ly short-changed in terms of their respec­tive ​‘boy trou­ble’ and ​‘math home­work’ sub­plots, but there is an unde­ni­able charm and warmth about it all the same.

Craig T Nel­son and Hol­ly Hunter in par­tic­u­lar are on top form, and the laughs are gen­uine and well-earned (a scene involv­ing Jack-Jack and a rac­coon is a mas­ter­class in phys­i­cal com­e­dy). As an exten­sion of its source mate­r­i­al – and as a com­e­dy about a fam­i­ly that just hap­pens to save the world – Incred­i­bles 2 works just fine, lean­ing into col­lec­tive nos­tal­gia to ensure its record-smash­ing box office fig­ures. It’s just a shame direc­tor Brad Bird doesn’t bring any­thing new to the table in the vein of Inside Out or Coco.