Metacritic Film

Incredibles, The

Starring Craig T. Nelson, Holly Hunter, Samuel L. Jackson, Jason Lee, Spencer Fox, Sarah Vowell, Elizabeth Peña, John Ratzenberger, and Wallace Shawn

MPAA RATING: PG for action violence

Buena Vista Pictures
Action  |  Adventure  |  Animation  |  Comedy  |  Family/Kids
115 minutes | Color
USA
Released In Theaters November 5, 2004

From the creators of "Toy Story," "Monsters, Inc." and "Finding Nemo," comes this hilarious action-packed animated adventure about superheroes. (Disney Enterprises, Inc./Pixar Animation Studios)

WRITTEN BY
Brad Bird

DIRECTED BY
Brad Bird

Overall Metascore

This is a weighted, normalized average of all individual scores given by critics, on a scale of 0 (worst) to 100 (best).

90 / 100

Critic Reviews

100 The Hollywood Reporter
Pixar again hitches top-notch storytelling to the very best in CG animation.
100 New York Magazine Ken Tucker
The sleek beauty, crafty wit, family warmth, and impeccable slapstick suffusing The Incredibles immediately vaults it to a new, higher level of entertainment.
100 Variety
As deliriously smart escapist fare, The Incredibles is practically nonpareil.
100 Entertainment Weekly
Dazzlingly beautiful, funny, and meaningful.
100 LA Weekly
The Incredibles creates so seamless a mood of exhilaration that we resent being pulled out of it.
100 Miami Herald
A visually thrilling experience.
100 Philadelphia Inquirer
A movie with the sweet soul of "Toy Story" and the boisterous spirit of "Spy Kids."
100 Los Angeles Times
Bird has created the unprecedented film that is not just a grand feature-length cartoon but a grand feature, period, a piece of animation that's involving across a spectrum of comedy, action, even drama.
100 Washington Post
It's easily the best and brightest family-friendly movie of the year.
100 New York Post
A spectacularly rendered tale of a family of superheroes, takes the art form to a whole new level.
100 Wall Street Journal
A work of huge, if unobtrusive, ambition -- a vision of modern life, appropriate for sophisticated adults as well as for kids, that is both satirical and, of all things, inspirational. It's a great film about the possibility of greatness.
100 Baltimore Sun
True-blue Incredibles is a super tribute to the power of family and the might of imagination.
100 Portland Oregonian M. E. Russell
It's hilarious, thrilling and filled with "life-truth" -- but it also conceals its effort under a layer of great writing and subtle craftsmanship.
100 Salon.com
The Incredibles has that rare quality of feeling modern and classic at the same time.
91 Seattle Post-Intelligencer
In a movie era when brand names mean very little, it shows once again that Pixar is a stamp of quality.
90 Washington Post Jennifer Frey
The movie is full of wonderful little touches: Syndrome, the bad guy, is drawn to remind viewers of "Heat Miser" from the classic Christmas cartoon "The Year Without a Santa Claus."
90 Slate
For all its wizardry, The Incredibles isn't among my favorite animated movies. Weirdly enough, I think of it, instead, as one of my favorite live-action superhero pictures.
90 Dallas Observer
Yes, yes--The Incredibles is beautiful to look at, but even more lovely beneath the computer-generated surfaces.
90 Time
The Incredibles has those characters, that heart.
90 Newsweek Jeff Giles
The vocal performances are a blast, Hunter's and Lee's in particular. The animation of the villain's tropical isle is stunning.
90 Film Threat Pete Vonder Haar
The smart dialogue doesn't hurt, of course, and perhaps the best work is done by Bird himself, who provides the voice of Edna "E" Mode, superhero fashion designer.
89 Austin Chronicle
An order-of-magnitude leap forward in animated storytelling.
88 Charlotte Observer
Among the handsome explosions, wacky effects, slapstick comedy and zooming action sequences of The Incredibles, writer-director Brad Bird is attempting to start a revolution.
88 Chicago Tribune
Delivers the perfect union - a vivid, sublime parody and valentine to the superhero genre.
88 Rolling Stone
Bird has crafted a film -- one of the year's best -- that doesn't ring cartoonish, it rings true.
88 Premiere
Preaches post-9/11 family values to conservatives while appeasing liberals with ideas of tolerance and social activism.
88 ReelViews
Isn't just fine family entertainment, it's superior family entertainment.
88 Boston Globe
Such smart, whiz-bang fun that you may not realize what it's about until you're safely home.
88 New York Daily News
Clever, buoyant and surprisingly human.
88 Chicago Sun-Times
Grown-ups are likely to be surprised by how smart the movie is, and how sneakily perceptive.
80 The New York Times
Because it is so visually splendid and ethically serious, the movie raises hopes it cannot quite satisfy. It comes tantalizingly close to greatness, but seems content, in the end, to fight mediocrity to a draw.
80 The Onion (A.V. Club)
The action sequences are choreographed with the crackerjack timing expected from Pixar, but the film's funniest and most affecting moments exploit the tension between a special family and a world that insists on dulling them down.
80 The New Yorker
Imagine my relief when Bob, Helen, and the kids, for all the nicety of their emotions, turned out to be--if I can risk a word that may be taboo in Pixar land--cartoons. Long may it stay that way.
80 Empire Colin Kennedy
Looks like 2004 has given birth to a new superhero franchise after all.
75 USA Today
One of the year's most clever and visually arresting computer-animated films, enlivened by a well-developed and credible cast of characters who just happen to be superheroes.
75 Christian Science Monitor
Sharper and smarter than any animation since "Shrek 2," making it one of the season's supermovies.
75 The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Leah McLaren
The smarter script and stronger range of performances than most high-budget blockbusters clogging theatres these days make you wonder why the live-action feature isn't already obsolete.
75 San Francisco Chronicle
The visual and emotional hues are darker [than previous Pixar films], and the focus rests more on middle age than coming of age. The adventures of a family of superheroes are likely to thrill and amuse children, but the film's more grown-up themes might go over their heads.
70 TV Guide
The result is truly a family film, not a kiddie time-waster that throws the occasional sop to adults; whether you like or love it is a function of how vividly the material reflects your own childhood fantasies.
70 Village Voice
Unfortunately, the delicious snatches of reflexive wit function as mere intermissions between the distended action sequences and Michael Bay–style megatonnage, which have earned Pixar its first ever PG rating.
60 Chicago Reader
The fun hardens into Fun after he's (Mr. Incredible) lured out of retirement and imprisoned in a remote island compound, though the sleek computer animation is spellbinding as usual.

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