Jeremy Heilman, the Problem is You

I'm normally not gonna piss on a critic for disagreeing with the crowd; after all, a lot of those movies with RT scores in the 90s were hyped into the heavens, and critics are often hype's loudest victims. And of course, you always have your critics like Armond White, who disagrees because it's probably his fetish or something (known to scream "I'M NOT HAVING SEX WITH YOU" during sex), but that's a different story.

In this entry, I'm gonna piss on Jeremy Heilman for disagreeing. He gave The Incredibles (97%), a 15/100, which, according to his his RT profile is the second-worst score he's ever given a film (out of 746 reviews). This normally wouldn't be SUCH a cause for concern—I'm not gonna yell at any of the other six critics who gave it bad reviews—but 15/100? For The Incredibles? A Pixar film? For kids? 15? Yeah, there's no way he disliked the movie THAT much, which leaves only one possible explanation: COMPLETELY UNFOUNDED POLITICAL MESSAGE EXTRAPOLATION! I love this game!

Pixar, the golden boy animators of the moment, return this season with The Incredibles, another entry in their series of dubious crowd-pleasers.

If by "of the moment" you mean "from their first feature film to the present, and then probably for at least the next ten years," then yeah, they're pretty fucking golden. But the point is, Jeremy Heilman doesn't like Pixar, and he understands that it's a good decision to admit bias as quickly as possible.

It follows the tired formula as their past films. To follow up their tales of domesticated fish, domesticated monsters, domesticated insects, and domesticated toys, they now present domesticated superheroes.

It would've been really, really awesome if A Bug's Life was just about normal, non-domesticated insects. And if Finding Nemo was a $150 million CGI nature documentary about fish. Or if Toy Story was just two hours of lifeless dolls.

I really hope Jeremy Heilman never has kids, because those will be the saddest children in America.

The plot this time out is as conventional as in any of the past Pixar films, borrowing liberally from the Spy Kids franchise, Alan Moore’s “Watchmen” comics, and James Cameron’s far superior True Lies.

Spy Kids: Really? You can steal plot from Spy Kids?
Watchmen: There are certainly similarities, yes, but I'm pretty sure the fact that The Incredibles is a KID-FRIENDLY CARTOON makes that point moot. Does anyone honestly expect a Pixar-produced superhero movie to not wear its influences on its sleeve?
True Lies: "Daddy, why is the girl naked and dancing? I'm scared!"
"Jesus, you kids have NO TASTE."

It has to be said that CGI spectacle is less the order of the day here than it has been in past Pixar films (Thankfully. After a while comes the realization that real water is more impressive to watch than any that is fabricated.).

They wanted to make a movie about fish. They make cartoons. I'm sorry there was water in it and I'm sorry they tried to make it look good.

Additionally, the voice acting is more restrained than the non-stop yelling that has marred several of the studio’s past efforts

Hey, does anyone else remember how nothing about this is true?

At first, while watching The Incredibles, I was frustrated by its seemingly shortsighted lack of superheroes outside of its American borders.

Alternate review: You know what really pisses me off about Toy Story? It was COMPLETELY oblivious to the Armenian Genocide.

You are watching a PG-rated comedic action movie about a family of superheroes. This is not a thought that is supposed to cross your mind. And just because it did cross your mind, it doesn't make you any more socially aware. You're actually actively looking for these things in a children's action movie. This isn't like Armond White being lazy and judging a film's sociopolitical message on the one or two scenes he decided to watch… Jeremy Heilman is going to deconstruct the shit out of every scene in The Incredibles, and he's going to make you sad.

Only as the film developed, did the omission reveal itself as an intentional one. Director Brad Bird, whose Cold War-era Iron Giant was carried a very political message of anti-violence is clearly aiming this film at an Americentric, post-9/11 world.

CLEARLY.

This is the part where I piss on Jeremy for disagreeing with the crowd, because I'm pretty sure he's the only one who believes this, and the only one naïve enough to believe everyone else is gonna get the "message." He's going to spend the rest of the review lampooning a movie for delivering a message that was received by no one but him. And I'm gonna get angry about it.

Strong, irresponsible imagery evokes the horrors of those attacks repeatedly. There are sequences showing a mother shielding her children from pillars of fire from above and exploding plane debris. There’s an extended shot of a plane flying into the southern tip of Manhattan island. There’s the constant reminder that the events in the film are about to end fifteen years of peace.

Jeremy, MOVIES HAVE PLANES IN THEM. Especially action movies, which involve a lot of explosions and traveling! Dude honestly takes out two scenes with planes and decides that they evoke 9/11 "repeatedly."

Oh, sorry, that's not all the evidence for this controversial case: the events of the film end fifteen years of peace! You know the best way to make a movie that ISN'T secretly about 9/11? Make absolutely certain it begins in the middle of a war, and not in the beginning. And make sure there aren't any peaces that last 15 years, because even though there was only 12 years between the Gulf War and the Iraq War, you're dumb and Jeremy hates you.

And then he rants for a paragraph about how it's too violent, which culminates with this buffoonery:

At first glance, you might wonder why The Incredibles was an animated film at all , but that’s probably because its carnage and insane politics wouldn’t be comic in live action.

No, you big dummy. No one ever wondered that. No one except you, and I'm not sure you're saying you wondered it at all, so I don't know why you brought it up. No one ever thought, "why isn't this Pixar movie live-action?" Because people know that Pixar makes animated films. That is the only reason it's animated. If it weren't animated, it wouldn't exist, because it was created by Pixar and unless 1906 ever gets made, they only make animated movies.

But yes, the "carnage" probably would've been harder to swallow in live action. I would love to hear your thoughts on Looney Tunes.

How the actions of the Parr family are supposed to translate into commentary on the post-9/11 world that The Incredibles invokes is beyond me.

What!? You're actually saying that you don't know how the main focus of the film conforms to the complete mess of a "commentary" you pulled out of your ass? YOU DON'T SAY

Its attempts to be politically relevant are hopelessly muddled at best and offensive at worst.

God, I cannot believe the fact that Toy Story, a movie about the Armenian Genocide, completely left out any allusion to the Adana Massacre of 1909. Its attempts to be politically relevant are hopelessly muddled at best and offensive at worst.

Bird’s sloppy obliviousness to the imagery that he employs is worse than outright propaganda,

Now this is just silly. Are you implying that the director and writer of the film inserted all of this 9/11 stuff without knowing it? You're saying that even the guy who wrote the film was unaware of the political message the film was "clearly" trying to convey? You do know Brad Bird actually wrote the film, right? And that it wasn't farted out by the government? I'll assume you know this. I have to assume that, by this point, you're starting to get it… you're the only one who read the film this way. The problem is you.

Since there’s not much indication that the slightly fascist family is being satirized, and since it’s too much a crowd-pleaser to be critical of the violent payoff that it delivers, it’s tough not to take its apparent message seriously.

It's actually quite easy, Jeremy. Incredibly, incredibly easy.