Director: Brad Bird
Year Released: 2004
Rating: 2.5
A superhero father (voiced by Craig T. Nelson), since retired to a mundane suburban life and strapped with a wife and three kids, longs to return to old form (like modern Dads who relive glory days of high school athletics) and fight 'evil' again after a long hiatus. It doesn't have the emotional resonance of The Iron Giant and for the most part is geared more for adults (who could appreciate its Edith Head gags and the secret desire to throw your boss through a wall) than kids, playing along with the formula set out by Pixar for mass appeal - I'm curious as to whether or not the scripts for the Pixar pictures were also designed by a computer script, since (like Finding Nemo before it), it relies heavily on the 'family values' macro. I am also under the impression that these very polished movies lack a sort of soul (The Iron Giant actually made you pity the giant machine; Monsters, Inc.'s pairing of Crystal and Goodman was impeccable): the last part of the movie, for example, devolves into a video game hybrid where it's more Sega than cinema - the young boy's running over enemies and on top of trees and water brings to mind the Sonic the Hedgehog series (in particular Sonic Adventure for the long outdated Dreamcast) and the final monster the family has to fight is straight out of Dr. Robotnik's (the main villain of the Sonic series) robot workshop.
