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When superheroes are driven underground by lawsuits, the “Supers” as they are called begin life as ordinary Americans. Unfortunately, the temptation of saving people seduces one of America’s greatest superheroes Bob Parr/ Mr. Incredible (Craig T. Nelson) back into the ring of fighting evil. When a company contacts Mr. Incredible to help them stop a robot that has started thinking for itself on an isolated Pacific island Mr. Incredible/st1:Sn> resumes fighting evil despite the wishes of his superhero wife Helen Parr/ Elastigirl (Holly Hunter). With her two children (each of whom has their own unique powers) in tow, Helen goes after Bob believing that he’s having an affair, or worse has gone back to fighting crime and risking their family in the process. ***

Brad Bird’s intelligent script and direction turned what could have easily been a misguided comedy into a sharp, witty and fun film that the entire family can enjoy. With witty visual references to everyone from Captain Marvel to the James Bond movies, “The Incredibles” is a rarity; a film that celebrates other films and mediums of entertainment but also stands alone as a great movie as well. Although “Shrek 2” made more money, there’s no doubt as to which animated feature was the better of the two. Pixar continues to demonstrate imagination and continues to take risks with ne subject matter rather than churn out a series of sequels to one successful film. Every film (with the exception of “Toy Story 2”) has been an original project which has tackled difficult subjects with humor, grace and intelligence all three of which are sorely lacking from most films produced in Hollywood. The amount of detail in “The Incredibles” is astonishing. The animation for example of Elastigirl even captures the way that Holly Hunter speaks out of one side of her mouth and the way that Craig T. Nelson holds his body when he walks. All of this is brilliantly translated to the CGI medium by the animators.

Once again we get an action packed group of extras on the second disc of this two DVD set. Two original shorts debut here. “Jack Jack Attack” shows exactly what happened to the babysitter during those horrified and frantic sounding phone calls to Helen/Elastigirl. It’s just as funny as the feature. We also get “Mr. Incredible and Pals” a short cartoon that emulates those funky 1960’s TV series (like “Captain Nemo”) where they used minimum animation, funky graphics and footage of real human lips matted on to the characters. It’s corny and a lot of fun. This cartoon also has a tongue-in-cheek commentary track from Mr. Incredible and Frozone the two featured superheroes in the cartoon. The charming Pixar short “Boundin’” which played with the movie appears here as well. We also get deleted scenes and alternate an alternate opening sequence in various stages of completion. The alternate opening which is presented in its storyboard format features commentary by Brad Bird explaining what the thought process was behind the sequence and why it was abandoned. “Incredi-Blunders” features various animation mistakes that occurred during the making of the film. They vary from characters missing everything but their teeth, eyes and hair to uncoordinated sequences where the costumes are missing are move out of alignment with the characters. ***

The first “Making of” featurette runs about 27 minutes and provides us with a comprehensive look into the difficulties Bird and his crew faced making the movie. The second “Making of” featurette is composed of smaller parts provide information about the making of this great movie from conception to alternate storylines and the final product. Combined they run about 70 minutes. We start with the story by Brad Bird with excerpts from Bird’s video diary while writing the script, interviews during production and after. You’ll understand why it takes a couple of years to create a film of this caliber. Story Supervisor Mark Andrews shows us te storyboarding process and we see how he and director/writer Bird interact. “Vowellet” who plays Violet in the movie discusses what she does on the side such as writing a history book “Assassination Vacation” discussing the assassination of various American Presidents. It’s actually pretty funny and entertaining. “Making of The Incredibles” and “More Making of The Incredibles” gives us a glimpse into the creation of the various characters with the animators discussing the difficulty in making the characters come alive. We also get a glimpse into the various unfinished animatics, and the animation at various levels of creation. The “Music” portion of this 40 minute “featurette” is the most fascinating more me as the composer managed to recall the classic spy themes of the 60’s and 70’s without imitating them. We hear comments from the various musicians involved in the session long with the composer discussing the challenges and fun of making music of this sort with a glimpse into the scoring session. Brad Bird discusses the biggest challenge of the film—the scale of it which is not unlike a Bond film in terms of creating the environments. Brad Bird himself did the voice for Edna and it’s pretty funny to hear the voice and see the character. Clearly the character combines Yoko Ono with Bette Midler and costume designer Edith Head and also anages to steal the film in every scene she’s in. Bill Wise one of the technical supervisors discusses how difficult it was to create the characters for the crowd scenes. ---

Brad Bird discusses how he immediately tried to subvert audience expectations to make “The Incredibles” an unusual project from the very beginning. Bird sets up the opening sequence as larger than life (both in the golden hued color to the actions that occur) to contrast with Bob and Helen’s life much later on. Bird reveals, for example, that Jason Lee played Buddy both as an adult and as a child altering the way that Lee spoke with Protools (a computer program that allows you to record and alter digital recordings) and by having Lee raise his voice half an ocave. All sorts of fascinating bits from Bird and producer Walker crop up throughout the commentary from influences to visual tributes to other movies and mediums. ***

The main animators discuss the difficulty in animating a much more physical film like an action-adventure movie. The amount of detail and types of motions are much, much more complex and forced the animators to develop new techniques and new software to make those moves realistic. The animators are also quite frank about the budget and time difficulties that they faced in creating the “universe” around the main characters. Evidently the animators used all the same models to create the background characters slightly manipulating the nose, chin and head here or there to create credible background characters that don’t all look the same. They also discuss the variations from the actual storyboards and where inspiration struck (such as “Santa Claus is Coming to Town”) as inspiration for certain sequences. ---