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THE
INCREDIBLES In an interview in this week's "Entertainment Weekly," Brad Bird, the relatively unknown director of "The Incredibles" (whose sole directorial credit is the touching and effective animated feature "The Iron Giant") said that most people wrongly consider animation a genre, not a medium. Hoping to fight that misconception with "The Incredibles," Bird created a film that was intended to be more like an action movie and less like, well, an animated film. Battling the assumption that toons are for kids, Bird tells a story about a family of super heroes dealing with bad guys and other, more nebulous, enemies. Cast out of society after a windfall of lawsuits sends super heroes into hiding, each member of the Parr family is experiencing their own set of problems. Bob, a.k.a. Mr. Incredible (voiced by Craig T. Nelson), is suffering a classic mid-life crisis, yearning for his glory days as a crime fighter. His wife, Helen a.k.a. Elastigirl (Holly Hunter), is dealing with her own issues, playing wife to an unhappy husband and mother to an infant, a hyperactive son and an uncommunicative Goth teenage daughter. Pulling from graphic novels, action films and standard issue kids' movies, Bird offers up an interesting film that delivers most of its best material in the first third. Seeing the Incredibles suffer the humiliations of average teenagers and middle-aged parents is when the film is most amusing and affecting. As Bob Parr sits in his tiny cubicle at the insurance company he works for, hunched over his computer, inadvertently knocking over his pencils, the scene is more reminiscent of "About Schmidt," than "Monsters Inc." And Parr, whose daily heroics take the form of helping clients circumvent the bureaucracy of the insurance industry, is most touching in these early scenes as a man who is literally and figuratively too big for the little life he's been confined to. Unfortunately Bird's story does ultimately fall into very familiar territory. When the Incredibles unite as a family to fight Buddy (Jason Lee), a spurned former fan of Mr. Incredible who's the main baddie (a mad scientist type reminiscent of the evil doctor in the recent "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow," complete with his own remote island and evil robots), the film becomes more pat and familiar. Pushing some boundaries and conforming to others, "The Incredibles" is refreshing and enjoyable, but not as groundbreaking as Disney is espousing it to be. Its
greatest gift to cinema, animated or otherwise, is the indelible character Edna
'E' Mode. Voiced by Bird, Mode is a diminutive fashion designer with a vague
European accent and oversized black glasses who, in the best scene of the film,
offers a hilarious monologue on why certain fabrics and styles simply won't do
for the working superheroes of today.
I LOVE
the HUCKABEES
Working off of a Charlie Kaufman-esque script, "Huckabees" begins with an expletive. That opening sentiment comes through the angry interior monologue of the film's beleaguered hero, Albert Markovski (Jason Schwartzman). An environmental activist, and founder of a non-profit designed to stop suburban sprawl, Albert opens the film sitting on a large rock, sectioned off by yellow tape, in a non-descript park. Muttering about the failures of his latest victory, the downtrodden Albert - who suffers daily humiliations at the hands of angry suburbanites who mock his protests - decides to go to a set of existential detectives for help. The detectives, a husband-and-wife team played by Lilly Tomlin and Dustin Hoffman, agree to take the case. In becoming a client, Albert agrees to allow himself to be spied on - everywhere from the office to the bathroom - in an effort to uncover the truth of his existence. Once the detectives are hired, following Albert on his bike and bugging his office, there work leads them directly to Brad Stand (Jude Law), a charming executive at a chain store called Huckabees. Albert's nemesis, Brad has high jacked Albert's non-profit in a scam to build a new Huckabees store on environmentally protected wetlands. What ensues is a farcical chain of events involving Albert's "other," a firefighter named Tommy (Mark Wahlberg) who is obsessed with the energy crisis; a run-in with the detectives' nemesis, a French nihilist (Isabelle Huppert); a Sudanese doorman; and Shania Twain. At different points in "Huckabees" Isabelle Huppert shoves Jason Schwartzman's face in the mud and then makes love to him; Mark Wahlberg smashes his face repeatedly with a large balloon; and Jude Law cries. What sounds like a film with no logical plot is, in fact, quite logical. Although "Huckabees" allows its characters to veer off into countless long-winded diatribes about being and nothingness, the film stays surprisingly centered. And, for all the talk of philosophy, "Huckabees" is ultimately grounded by its scathing critique of our celebrity-obsessed consumer culture, full of people who aren't paying attention to the things that really matter. On its simplest level "Huckabees" is about the way we embrace the Brad Stands of the world while trampling on the Albert Markovskis. On the one hand we have a beautiful, ambitious, superficial prick and, on the other, is an activist who's working for positive change. Without shying away from political overtones - "Huckabees" raises issues about everything from environmentalism and racism to our misguided understanding of Christian values - Russell drives this theme home with his two parallel stars. And,
shockingly, for all of the problems "Huckabees" highlights, the movie is finally
hopeful; hopeful that there is a happy medium between all these extremes. |
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