<Review by: Sailesh Ghelani>

Directed by Brad Bird. Starring the voice talent of Craig T. Nelson, Holly Hunter, Sarah Vowell, Huck Milner, Catherine Keener, Bob Odenkirk, Samuel L. Jackson, Sophia Bush, Isabella Rossellini, Jonathan Banks

Running time: 2 hours

Through the incredibly long running time of the film, I heard the children in the audience laugh a few times. But there was no thrill or enjoyment evident.

The first Incredibles film was path breaking in a way. The second one is simply the same old thing. When you resort to overused plot points like kids being lead to vengeance by their parent’s death during a burglary or a superhero saving a runaway train, you know you’ve run out of ideas and shouldn’t be making a sequel at all.

Our ‘supers’ have been outlawed, as is the sign of the times, what with mutants and metamorphs throughout superhero universes being subjugated to laws and restrictions because humans are scared of them. This ‘reality’ flows through the film, which talks about ‘Congress being useless’ and tackles male dominance in society. This is pretty heavy stuff for kids. And for adults, it’s really something they don’t want to see in a cartoon. Just entertain our kids please; we don’t need a sermon on world events. We have CNN, thank you very much.

In an effort to give people an accurate view of what the supers do, a tycoon called Winston Deavor (Bob Odenkirk) and his sister Evelyn (Catherine Keener) decide to make Elastic Girl (Holly Hunter) wear a bodycam and then send her off to fight crime that will be telecast on the news with footage of her heroic acts. But the evil Screenslaver doesn’t want this. He feels that supers make people lazy by getting them to change the world. There’s a whole voiceover by him about how people don’t play games, they watch game shows etc. with the goal of making us realise we’ve become a passive society. Which we have. We stay in touch with friends through Facebook, sometimes just liking posts and thinking we’ve kept in touch. It’s terrible. But is this movie appropriately depicting all this or even convincing us that it’s bad? No.

While Elastic Girl is off saving the day, Mr Incredible (Craig T. Nelson) takes care of the kids who are having all sorts of juvenile problems. Baby Jack-Jack is getting his powers and in the bargain fighting with a helpless racoon foraging for food in the trash – he’s sort of like a mean Scrat (from Ice Age). How the makers can justify showing a kid trying to kill a helpless animal I don’t know. Certainly not a good idea to put in kids’ heads.

When the reveal of the real villain comes about, you’re hardly surprised and a bit pissed that the motive for this villainy is a storyline that is way too formula and done-to-death. The darkness, the dry humour, the struggle to embed a message all make you wish for days when animated movies were joyful and inspirational. The Incredibles 2 is neither of those.

PS: Only Samuel L. Jackson’s Frozone and director Brad Bird’s (surprising) Edna Mode add some zest to the film.