Inside Out

Two things that Pixar have always done very well: imaginatively mapping the infrastructure of their settings (the factory in ‘Monsters, Inc’, the villain’s island lair in ‘The Incredibles’, the town of Radiator Springs in ‘Cars’); and depicting isolation, loneliness or the inability to fit in (early scenes in ‘Wall-E’ and ‘Up’ are perfect exemplars, ditto Remy’s difficulty relating to his family in ‘Ratatouille’). At the opposite end of the scale, there’s always been an intuitive understanding of the crowd-pleasing dynamic of mismatched protagonists working as a team for the greater good (the ‘Toy Story’ trilogy, ‘The Incredibles’).

‘Inside Out’ harnesses all of these elements to tell a story where the stakes are ostensibly lower (no-one’s threatened with immolation at the hands of a Sid-like sociopath or plunged into an inferno as per ‘Toy Story’ or ‘Toy Story 3’, nor is an entire city threatened with destruction a la ‘The Incredibles’) and yet the emotional payoff is infinitely higher. ‘Inside Out’, moreover, is a film without a villain. Or rather, a film without a corporeal villain.

The protagonist is 11-year-old Riley (voiced by Kaitlyn Dias), a good-natured and cheerful lass who enjoys hockey and has some great friends and who is the light of her parent’s life. Until, that is, they up sticks from the great outdoors of Minnesota to the cramped city streets of San Francisco and an apartment that the film does its best to make look squalid but actually seems a decent piece of real estate. That Riley faces this disappointment head on and tries as hard as possible to remain optimistic is due to Joy (Amy Poehler), one of five emotions who engineer Riley’s wellbeing from a futuristic control room in her mind.

Joy’s colleagues in this enterprise are Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Fear (Bill Hader), Anger (Lewis Black) and Disgust (Mindy Kaling), all of whom are permitted by control-freak Joy to do only what is needed to provide Riley with protection (Fear) or motivation (Anger). This leaves Disgust and Sadness as the most under-utilised of the team, and while Disgust affects a “yeah, whatever” kind of attitude, Sadness remains perplexed as to why certain of Riley’s memories – particularly core memories – are entirely colour-coded as products of Joy’s intervention when, given their context, they should have been tinged with an undercurrent of sadness.

How the infrastructure of memories works, with Riley’s subconscious as a series of theme parks, is something I’ll leave you to discover for yourself – the pure inventiveness of how the different aspects of her personality function is the film’s chief pleasure; suffice it to say, for the purpose of this review, that memories and core memories glow with the colour of the emotion that created them; most glow golden after Joy; and anything Sadness touches is blue. The dramatic arc of the narrative begins when Sadness persists, against Joy’s orders, in handling ostensibly happy memories. Events come to a head and Joy and Sadness find themselves ejected from the control room with Riley’s core memories, each of which powers one of the theme parks. Joy’s mission is to return these memories and make Riley emotionally functional again while keeping them from Sadness’s clutches.

Meanwhile, with the polar opposites of Joy and Sadness absent – i.e. the two emotions responsible for the majority of Riley’s emotional register – the control room is left to the dubious and unfocussed stewardship of Anger, Fear and Disgust. As a result, Riley drifts into ennui. The theme parks shut down and, as Riley’s retraction from the world around her continues, are threatened with destruction. I said earlier that the film doesn’t have a corporeal villain. It has an incorporeal one; a shadow. Other Pixar films may have dealt with loneliness and, to a certain degree, dysfunctionalism. ‘Inside Out’ is a Pixar film that deals with depression.

It does so in a way that doesn’t step outside its ostensibly-for-children animated aesthetic, but is nonetheless effective and sometimes slyly so. Sadness’s response to any situation she can’t get a handle on is to lie down, bury her face and protest that she’s too tired (“you’ll have to drag me,” she tells Joy at one point). There’s a pit-of-forgotten-memories setpiece which is thematically and visually similar to the levels-of-memory bit in ‘The Book of Life’, involving an heroic act by Riley’s already-forgotten imaginary friend from early infanthood that is the most genuine poignant moment director Pete Docter conjures.

Joy and Sadness’s journey back – a sort of day-glo ‘Odyssey’ – is juxtaposed with Riley’s transformation from outgoing prepubescent to sullen, rebellious teenager-in-waiting. Again, Docter and his creative team chart the character arc realistically but sympathetically. Riley’s behaviour is understandable and the effects of her withdrawal accrete slowly so that by the time she comes to a decision (Anger at work in the control room) that threatens the stability of the family unit, the viewer still feels sympathy.

‘Inside Out’ is a film of lush visuals (it’s Pixar: what else would you expect?) and a wealth of details, from playful humour (the literalisation of a train of thought) to unexpected in-jokes (“forget it, Jake, it’s Cloudtown”). But most of all it’s a film of grace notes and wonderfully observed details. I particularly liked the depiction of Riley’s emotions as being of different height and bounding around all over the control room, whereas those of her parents are all the same height, formally seated around a control panel and working in equilibrium; as a comment on the difference between a child’s emotional make-up and a functional adult’s, it’s spot on and incorporated into the film’s aesthetic in a way that doesn’t call itself to the audience’s attention.

In fact, Docter is very good at trusting to his audience to assimilate the material and not rely on laborious exposition (a whirlwind pre-credits tour of how memories and emotions work sets the scene incredibly swiftly for the amount of detail it imparts). Docter was behind ‘Monsters, Inc’ and ‘Up’, the latter still one of my absolute favourite Pixars, and what he delivers here stands with the studio’s best. After a fairly dispiriting run from ‘Cars 2’ to ‘Monsters University’, ‘Inside Out’ sees Pixar back on form.

13 FOR HALLOWEEN #5: Toy Story of Terror

Woody (Tom Hanks) and the gang are passing the time during a cross-country drive. The trunk of a car can be a dark and claustrophobic place so they distract themselves by watching a horror movie on a laptop. Which is kind of like an ophidiophobe chilling out with ‘Snakes on a Plane’. And it doesn’t help that Mr Pricklepants (Timothy Dalton) – who really ought to be called Mr Smartypants – keeps talking over the film, giving a running commentary on horror movie tropes and how the narrative plays out. When a flat tyre strands them at a dreary and, more to the point, isolated motel, Mr Pricklepants is in his element, confidently predicting that before too much longer the group will be split up and “picked off one by one”.

Confidently and accurately.

‘Toy Story of Terror’ may only be a short, but it’s as rich in ideas, inventiveness and entertainment as any of its feature-length brethren. While presenting a mildly scary tale for kids, the litany of horror genre lore and specific movie references that it throws out ensure its no less entertaining for adults. Indeed, the unforced panache with which its homages are staged – be it a shower curtain placed centrally in a tense cat-and-mouse scene or Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen) declaring “I’ll be right back” – is a delight. It even teases the knowing adult audience with the possibility of Jessie the Cowgirl (Joan Cusack) as final girl.

Speaking of whom, the film neatly keys into its predecessors, relying on Jessie’s backstory from ‘Toy Story 2’ to generate tension: her claustrophobia when she’s accidentally locked in a tool box in an early scene foreshadows her requirement to be sealed in a box during the denouement when she has to … Ah, but that would be telling. Moreover, the solidarity of the toys holding hands as they slide inexorably towards the furnace at the end of ‘Toy Story 3’ is subverted as the group are split up during the genuinely tense middle section. Likewise, a sequence of captivity and attempted escape also echoes that instalment.

How scary is it? Well, there’s nothing that reaches the clammy heights of the furnace set-piece, or even the evil playhouse that is Sid’s bedroom in ‘Toy Story’. Nor is there anything as squirmily tense as the airport sequence in ‘Toy Story 2’. But as a comedy-horror, it works brilliantly. It works because, like the absolute best of Pixar, it’s been made with care and wit and attention to detail. Director Angus MacLane, who co-wrote it with Pixar stalwart Andrew Stanton, understand the horror genre; they know when to spoof and when to scare.

Am I making it sound like ‘Toy Story Does Scream’? Then so be it, but with the caveat that ‘Toy Story of Terror’ is funnier, cleverer and more sophisticated than ‘Scream’ – and, at 21 minutes, mercifully shorter.

Brave

Has the Pixar bubble burst?

Two years ago, I came out of ‘Toy Story 3’ with mixed feelings – so mixed that I elected not to post a review on these pages. I found much of it inventive, delightful and entertaining; some of it utterly lachrymose in a Spielbergian emotional pornography kind of way; and an extended sequence in the third act just plain mean-spirited. A year ago, I came out of ‘Cars 2’ thinking that whichever bright spark had decided that Mater was protagonist material needed his arse kicking all the way to Radiator Springs and back again. 

Now we have ‘Brave’. And before we can discuss a single frame of film, there’s an elephant in the room as big as the bear that appears in the castle in a crucial scene. (And can I just say … bears in Scotland? Maybe prior to 900 AD, however the historical period the film takes as its point of reference seems to be concurrent with the Dunkeld monarchy of 1058 to 1290.) ‘Brave’ was originally announced as Pixar’s first pro-feminist production, boasting not only a heroine (all Pixar’s previous protagonists, right down to a gender-specific robot, having been male) but a female director, Brenda Chapman. Back then the project was called ‘The Bear and the Bow’, a more appropriate title than ‘Brave’ since the overriding theme is family, loyalty and age difference rather than any rites-of-passage requirement necessitating proof of valour.

Then Chapman was given the push – Pixar’s PR trotted out the hoary old “creative differences” line – and replaced by Mark Andrews (although Chapman retains a secondary “directed by” credit) and the project was retitled ‘Brave’, presumably for no other reason than to evoke ‘Braveheart’, another bit of Hollywood McScotland-ism. Chapman’s original concept of the project was an examination of the mother-daughter dynamic inspired by her relationship with her own daughter. Andrews and his co-writers (or should that be re-writers?) turn in something considerably more simplistic and infinitely less satisfying emotionally.

Essentially, ‘Brave’ – and I’m still fucked if I know who or what the title refers to – gives us a theme-park version of the Highlands in which Princess Merida (voiced by Kelly Macdonald), daughter of unreconstructed warrior king Fergus (Billy Connolly) and diplomat queen Elinor (Emma Thompson, trying for a Scottish accent in her early scenes then giving up entirely), rails against being offered as bride to whichever son of clan chiefs proves himself at the highland games. She visits a witch (Julie Walters, doing an inspired “old crone” routine) and asks for a spell which will change her mother. Meaning change her mother’s mind re: the marriage arrangements. Instead, Elinor is changed into … well, check out the original title. 

Thus far: a princess, a wicked (ish) witch, a curse, enchanted woods and fairies (in the shape of will-o’-the-wisps). Disney acquired Pixar in 2006; six years down the line, the assimilation begins.

To be fair, ‘Brave’ isn’t necessarily bad. There are some truly inspired scenes: everything involving the witch’s hut is terrific, most notably a genius gag that turns a cauldron into an answering machine. There’s also a low-brow but funny-as-fuck moment where a band of arms-bearing clansmen, finding themselves on the roof of a castle and locked out, abseil to the ground by means of tied-together kilts and file sheepishly past the camera, arses prominent. This ties with a ‘Mission Impossible’ style retrievable of a cell-door key from a serving woman’s pneumatic bosom as the least PG moment in a PG-rated kid’s movie.

The animation is gorgeous, no questions asked. Historical inconsistencies notwithstanding, ‘Brave’ captures the grandeur of the highlands so sweepingly that, on exiting the cinema, I immediately wanted to get in my car and drive north. The choppy surfaces of lochs, the vibrant colour of the heather, the spray of waterfalls – all of captured in a standard of CGI that, at its best, verges of photo-realism. Judged solely on visual aesthetics, one could easily pronounce ‘Brave’ a masterpiece and leave it at that. Indeed, the beauty of its imagery is enough to justify a DVD purchase and multiple viewings.

And yet … and yet …

I’ve been spoiled. I’ve got used to floating out of the cinema after a Pixar film, not walking out. Finding myself in the pub afterwards trawling my vocabulary for superlatives, not making do with “yeah, it was okay”. Itching to get home and start writing a review, not reluctantly putting finger to keyboard and wishing I could be more enthusiastic. Or, to put it another way, there have been other Pixar films that have been more emotionally compelling, other Pixar films that have been funnier, other Pixar films that have provided better entertainment, other Pixar films that have delivered better narratives.

For two decades, Pixar have successively raised the bar in every artistic aspect. Perhaps now they are falling victims to their own success: they are producing films that are merely good, rather than groundbreaking masterpieces. And maybe this is because, despite their technological advances, Pixar remain regressive in one crucial respect. It’s still a boy’s club.

Sort it, fellas.

Cars 2

When ‘Cars’ opened in 2006, the critics were lukewarm. The main bone of contention seemed to be that it wasn’t as good as ‘The Incredibles’. Which it wasn’t. That said, I preferred it to ‘A Bug’s Life’ and ‘Finding Nemo’, the brilliance of which is punctured, in scene after scene, by the irritant that is Dory (the second most annoying character in the Pixar canon; we’ll come to the first in a minute).

‘Cars’, ultimately, is a decent film with a terrific ending. Aesthetically, its anthropomorphism of human traits, personalities and nationalities into automobiles throws up illogicalities left, right and centre – as Bryce muses in his excellent review on Things That Don’t Suck, “I wouldn’t be the first to wonder if there are not piles of human corpses just offscreen” – but once one rationalizes this in the context of John Lasseter’s love of ’50s Americana, a time as much defined by the fins, gleaming chrome and whitewall tyres of its cars as by its music or its fashions, then one can settle back and enjoy a homely tale of a race car who learns to slow down. ‘Cars’ has plenty to offer: incredibly beautiful visuals, some great supporting characters (the banter between Sarge, a 1940s US Army jeep, and Fillmore, a hippie VW Microbus, is priceless), a finale that tells the kids that, actually, winning isn’t all that important, and an end-credits sequence that transposes the film’s anthropomorphism to Pixar’s previous outings in a montage that’s arguably wittier and more inventive than anything else in ‘Cars’.

I can understand the hesitation to embrace ‘Cars’ as wholly as the ‘Toy Story’ trilogy, ‘The Incredibles’ or ‘Ratatouille’ – but it’s still a film I have a lot of time for.

When ‘Cars 2’ opened last month, it was to the absolute all-time worst reviews in Pixar’s history. Which is kind of understandable given that a whole lot of folks were ambivalent about the first one. The question of why Lasseter was so committed to the project when, say, ‘The Incredibles 2’ or even ‘Ratatouille Part Deux: The Masterchef Years’ would have been a far safer option.

But commit to it Lasseter did and, for all that I enjoyed the manic energy of the film’s last half hour, it was in many ways a bad decision. Don’t get me wrong: I wish I could thumb my nose at the naysayers and declare ‘Cars 2’ a jewel in Pixar’s crown; I wish that all the things I enjoyed about it (Pixar just keep raising the bar visually; there are some inspired in-jokes; it’s a U-rated film that has a “your mother” moment) outweighed the faults. Hell, I’d consider it acceptable if the fun and flaws simply balanced each other out on the scales of critical analysis.

Unfortunately, there are two things about ‘Cars 2’ – and they are inextricably interlinked – that present an almost insurmountable problem:

1. Fucking Mater.

2. It’s a Bond movie. With talking cars.

Or, tying those to together in one unholy bundle the way the script does: it’s a Bond movie with talking cars in which Mater gets his secret agent funk on.

I could end this review right here and I think we’d all be au fait as to what’s wrong with this movie.

For the defence, the fact that it’s a Bond movie doesn’t bother me all that much. Bond movies lend themselves well to satire, particularly the Roger Moore entries which about one micrometer from being cartoons anyway. The mild controversy about the amount of shoot-outs doesn’t bother me either: there were men with guns providing a threat to the protagonists of ‘The Incredibles’ and nobody whinged about that. It does bother me that ‘The Incredibles’ has already ticked the Pixar-spoofs-Bond box and that the material mined by ‘Cars 2’ would have worked a lot better as an ‘Incredibles’ sequel. (Seriously, Mr Lasseter: ‘Incredibles 2’, any time you’re ready. I really want to know what the deal is with the Underminer.)

It also bothers me that the set-pieces ram home the illogicalities of the anthropomorphism more gratingly than anything in the original. Talking cars in a roadside diner I can just about get my head round. Talking cars getting fitted with new tyres by another talking car assisted by a talking forklift truck that uses its blades to operate air-tools …. okayyyyyy. Talking fucking cars on a fucking oil rig being spied on by another talking car which is balanced on a fucking tightrope - that’s pushing it!

The overall aesthetic of ’50s small town America was the key to the first film. It’s what allows everything else to cohere. ‘Cars’ only functions as movie because of Radiator Springs. Location defines many films; with ‘Cars’, it permits the film. ‘Cars 2’ removes the action from Radiator Springs, and in doing so replaces the peaceable and harmonious values of its predecessor with raucous, over the top action. Yes, it’s called ‘Cars 2’; yes, it features Lightning McQueen and Tow Mater and Sarge and Fillmore and the rest of the gang (except for Paul Newman’s Hornet Hudson, whose absence is, credit where due, sensitively acknowledged in an early scene); yes, they’re all demonstrably the same characters. But ‘Cars 2’ exists in an entirely different fictive universe to ‘Cars’ and it’s this as much as anything that makes it such an awkward, unsatisfying viewing experience.

The second problem, as mentioned several hundred words ago, is Mater.

I will not speak of Mater.

I will give the nod to the entertaining and likeable new characters – the suave Finn McMissile (voiced by Michael Caine) and the elegant, albeit inelegantly named Holly Shiftwell (Emily Mortimer). I will mention the nifty portrayal of the villains (the monocled Professor Zundapp is spot on). I will high-five anybody involved in the production for the last act piss-take of the Royal Family and the unmitigated chaos the protagonists wreak through the centre of London.

But I will not speak of Mater. I owe it to my blood pressure not to.

100th Post: PERSONAL FAVES: Ratatouille

'The Incredibles' was a work of genius, the film that got me genuinely enthusiastic about Pixar. The follow-up, John Lasseter's 'Cars', attracted some of the most indifferent reviews the studio has yet received. Its main failing - so the critical consensus seemed to have it - was that it wasn't 'The Incredibles'.

Personally, I enjoyed 'Cars': even if it's not the out-and-out masterpiece its predecessor was, it's still a damn good film - with a great ending. And there's no arguing that the level of animation raised the bar yet further.

Then came 'Ratatouille'. It arrived on a wave of publicity that made the marketing campaign for 'Revenge of the Sith' look reserved. It had a title that didn't exactly roll off the tongue (the posters featured a pronunciation guide!) and it was about a rat who enjoyed cooking.

A rat? I thought. In a restaurant? This doesn't look good.

I was wrong. I was about as wrong as I've ever been about anything. 'Ratatouille' is Pixar's cleverest, most nuanced, most imaginative, most beautifully animated work to date.

Where to start on what makes it so great?

Brad Bird's script and direction. The very idea of a rat taking advice from the ghost of a dead chef as he teams up with an incompetent dishwasher/garbage boy to create culinary masterpieces which turn around the fortunes of an ailing restaurant calls not so much for a suspension of disbelief but a bloody great industrial crane to winch up the audience's disbelief, lower it onto one of those low-loaders that are so big and so wide that the truck towing it needs a police escort, and haul it off to a warehouse the size of Texas. Bird achieves this by taking time to establish character and situation, the main character here being Remy the rat (voiced by comedian Patton Oswalt).

The first act sets up Remy as a connoisseur of good food, his brother Emile (Peter Sohn) as an archetypal rat living off the barely edible (Remy's attempts to broaden Emile's palate provide much of the comedy in the early scenes), and their over-bearing father Django (Brian Dennehy) as the pack leader. Django scorns Remy's dietary refinements and insists that Remy is just a rat, the same as the rest of the pack. The conflict between them - family vs. individuality; the human perception of Remy as vermin vs. Remy's desire to integrate with a world beyond the pack - gives the film a surprising depth and poignancy, particularly when Django shows Remy a shop window filled with traps, poisons and the dangling corpses of rats thus disposed of.

Human machinations are just as insensitive elsewhere. Remy's infiltration of a farmhouse kitchen (Django and the pack are all nested in the rafters) sees the little old lady who lives there go psycho with a shotgun, almost demolishing her home in her obsession with blasting the rodents. Fleeing the carnage, the pack heads for a nearby river where Remy becomes separated from them. Washed up in a sewer beneath Paris, Remy goes above ground, guided by the spirit of deceased restauranteur Gusteau (Brad Garrett), and finds himself embroiled in shady dealings at Gusteau's old restaurant, where current chef Skinner (Ian Holm) plots to retain ownership of the establishment when he discovers Gusteau had a natural heir.

It is against this background that Remy forms an unlikely partnership with Linguini (Lou Romano), a complete clutz working a dead-end job at the restaurant. They hit a winning streak with Remy's inspired creations, but things are complicated by Skinner's increasing suspicions, the attentions of vituperative food critic Anton Ego (Peter O'Toole), a prying health inspector and a budding romance between Liguini and fellow chef Colette (Janeane Garofalo).

Then the pack find Remy and again he is torn between dedication to family and the desire to prove himself ...

'Ratatouille' has an intricate, multi-layered script. Sure, there's plenty of fast-moving set-pieces - most notably a chase through the streets of Paris and a mass raid by the pack on the restaurant - but Bird's emotional investment in his characters is what counts. Just as attentive and detailed is the animation, which even bests that of 'Cars'. Instead of waxing lyrical about how astounding textured everything is, let me just say this: halfway through seeing 'Ratatouille', sitting in Nottingham's Cineworld and my stomach growling even though I'd eaten before coming out, I turned to Paula and whispered, "We're going a restaurant the moment this ends." The cooking scenes are so evocative you can almost smell the food.

Some films make me laugh, some make me cry. Some films transport me in the world they create. Some make me feel infinitely better about things. 'Ratatouille' does all of these - there's a lovely vignette where a simple meal evokes a childhood memory that's damn near had me blubbing on more than one occasion - as well as making me hungry. I can't think of any other film I can say that about.

PERSONAL FAVES: The Incredibles

Right then: Pixar.

I was hesitant about 'Toy Story', held off from seeing it. My purist sensibilities were offended that they'd done the whole thing on a computer and were trying to pass it off as animation. Bunch of bull! Animation meant pencils, pens and paints a la Studio Ghibli or claymation a la Wallace and Gromit, and Tom Hanks and Tim Allen weren't bloody going to tell me otherwise!

Only when I finally watched 'Toy Story', I was pleasantly surprised: the script was whip-smart, the ... oh, all right then: animation ... was detailed and pleasing. In a word, it was fun. 'A Bug's Life' was a sterling follow-up, leaving no doubt that Pixar were investing as much in the script as they were in the visuals. 'Toy Story 2' raised the bar big time. Funnier, cleverer and altogether more impressive and its predecessor, we're talking 'The Godfather Part II' of animation. It was a hard act to follow, but 'Monsters, Inc.' came close, with only a sagging middle section (during which the main characters do little more than run interminably around the factory) letting it down. 'Finding Nemo' took Pixar's visual genius to new levels - the animation wasn't just good, it was textured - but the film was waterlogged by a schmaltzy narrative and characters that came off more irritating than amusing.

Then came 'The Incredibles'. And the gates of revelation stood open.

Written and directed by Brad Bird (let's just say he cut his teeth working on 'The Simpsons' and let that speak for itself), 'The Incredibles' is just so cool, so clever, so confident in its marriage of a 1950s comic book sensibility with a satirically contemporary worldview, that it's hard to know where to start. Not that I want to give too much away - 'The Incredibles' is one of those rare film-going treats that delivers a real sense of joy when you experience it for the first time. And, better still, repeated viewings just improve it.

The frenetic opening sequence sees muscular superhero Mr Incredible (voiced by Craig T Nelson) go about his daily business of chasing down bank robbers, rescuing helpless kittens, being nice to little old ladies, saving the suicidal and thwarting the plans of megalomaniacal villians - all before joining his bride-to-be Elastigirl (Holly Hunter) at the altar. Life is good. Until, that is, he finds himself the defendant in a lawsuit brought by the man he saved against his will. A precedent is set. Other superheroes are sued, subpeona'd and slagged off in the press. The goverment institutes an amnesty: all superheroes are relocated and given new - normal - identities; a fresh start in the everyday world. The condition is the non-use of their superpowers.

Fast forward a few years and Mr Incredible is working for an insurance company, hating himself for rejecting claims and pressured by his pompous jackass of a boss to reject even more claims. Elastigirl has remodelled herself as the archetypal house-proud housewife, but is having a hard time conditioning their children, Dash and Violet, to a conventional lifestyle where their powers - lightning-fast reflexes, invisibility and the ability to project forcefields - must be kept secret. The infant Zack hasn't yet manifested a talent - that particular revelation is reserved for the payoff.

So already we've had an inspired subversion of the DC/Marvel Comics superhero ethos (can you imagine Superman had up in court or the X-Men named in a damages suit?), a Dilbert-like depiction of office cubicle corporate culture, and - unsurprising given Bird's 'Simpsons' credentials - an hilarious, gleeful portrait of a dysfunctional family.

Then Mr Incredible is offered a secret mission by a mysterious benefactor and lure of the past proves too strong to withstand ...

Thus Bird moves 'The Incredibles' into its second act and an already brilliant film quite simply goes supernova. From the Bondian lair of Mr Incredible's embittered nemesis to the 'North by Northwest'-style residence of fashion-designer-to-superheroes Edna Mold (voiced by Bird himself!), allusions, homages and in-jokes abound. God knows if the kids who were in the audience when I first saw it at Nottingham's UGC cinema understood even a fraction of it, but I was delighted. Not only was it hog heaven for the film buff, but the plot was streamlined, the set-pieces taut and suspenseful, the structure intricate, the writing witty and intelligent, and the whole thing put together with eye-catching visual flair.

For me, 'The Incredibles' is quite simply perfect. There's not a wrong note, a duff line or a needless moment in it. Everything counts. The next Pixar production, 'Cars', was effortlessly entertaining - a good movie with a great ending - but it was hard to see how Pixar could possibly top 'The Incredibles'.

Then Brad Bird went and made 'Ratatouille' and did just that.