The Incredibles

An animated film set in a world where superheroes have been banned. After a series of lawsuits the heroes were retired. All of them gave up their identities and moved into ordinary lives. Bob works at an insurance company. He is forbidden to help customers and does it in secret. His wife Helen runs the house with three children. At night Bob goes out with an old friend and works accident scenes. An offer arrives. A secret job on a distant island and good money; Bob tells his family he has found work. From there the film turns into a family picture. Helen finds out, flies to the island, and two of the children have stowed away on the plane. What the narrative is interested in is not power but middle age: Bob is unhappy, overweight and stuck in his past, and the film treats that as a marital matter rather than a heroic crisis. The villain is a fan. Syndrome was rejected as a child, and having no powers of his own he manufactures power that can be bought; his last line summarises the idea of the film. The costume designer appears briefly and hers is the most remembered section; the business about capes starts as a joke and pays off in the narrative. The design leans on the spy films of the 1960s and the music imitates the same period. Putting human characters at the centre to this degree was a technical difficulty for the studio at the time; hair, fabric and skin had to be solved at once. The film won Academy Awards for Best Animated Feature and Sound Editing. Brad Bird wrote and directed. Who it is for: any age; the narrative works for children and adults. Who it is not for: several scenes are hard for small children; characters really die in this film.