Incredibles 2 review roundup: Another heroic Pixar outing

Critics give their verdict on the superhero sequel

(Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)

Wile Pixar may have initially focussed on original films (minus the Toy Story series), recent years have seen the studio release sequels to nearly all their most-beloved properties.

The reception has been somewhat mixed. Finding Dory, Monster’s University, and both Cars sequels are not necessarily bad film but they fall into the lower echelons of Pixar’s work. Meanwhile, new properties Coco and Inside Out have won rave-reviews across the board.

Where will Incredibles 2 fall? Does the Brad Bird-directed sequel, reaching cinemas fourteen years after the original, suffer from sequelitus? The reviews are now out on our favourite superhero family’s latest outing, and – perhaps to some surprise – the consensus looks unanimously positive.

Currently holding a 96% score on aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes and an 83 on Metacritic (as of writing), Pixar’s latest sequel has impressed critics, many praising the character arches, powerful messages, and an awe-inspiring set-piece featuring a runaway train.

Due to Incredibles 2 reaching US cinemas almost a month before the UK – 15 June in the States, 13 July here – the majority of reviews come from American publication. The UK consensus should likely come over the next few weeks. Until then, read snippets of the reviews below.

Roger Ebert – Brian Tallerico – 3.5/4

“It’s a movie that’s constantly in motion, surprising you with the way it so seamlessly flows from action to comedy to family and back again, buoyed by a jazzy, fantastic score by Michael Giacchino. It’s a testament to Bird’s filmmaking ability how effortless Incredibles 2 often feels. Nothing feels too eager-to-please, even the Jack-Jack material, which is surprisingly funny and fresh.”

Washington Post – Michael O’Sullivan – 4/5

“Perhaps most intriguingly, Incredibles 2 is both pop-culture eye candy and a sly critique of it — albeit one delivered in the form of the bad guy, who rails against the mediation of screens as a poor substitute for unfiltered life experience. I don’t need to tell you who wins here, but it’s refreshing to see a movie sequel that can question its own existence, even as it revels in it.”

Vulture – David Edelstein

Can we dare to hope that the studio people behind the current plague of superhero movies will watch Incredibles 2 and feel a twitch of shame? Their films are largely set inside computers anyway, so why not take their cues from Bird and streamline the storytelling, distill the action to its lyrical essence, and give us one great climactic sequence instead of the usual shambolic five? May they learn from the Bird to fly high!

The Hollywood Reporter – Todd McCarthy

Boosted by central characters that remain vastly engaging and a deep supply of wit, Incredibles 2 certainly proves worth the wait, even if it hits the target but not the bull’s-eye in quite the way the first one did. It remains to be seen whether everyone who loved the original when they were 6 years old and is now 20 will rush out to catch this follow-up, but there’s plenty of crackling entertainment value here for viewers from 5 to 95.

Screen Daily – Tim Grierson

If there’s one quibble with this nimble entertainment, it’s that Bird’s eye-popping flair outpaces his story’s emotional resonance. Incredibles 2 is such a fleet treat that it doesn’t always stop for its characters’ pathos to really connect... But that limitation is somewhat mitigated by the warmth of the voice performances.

The Wrap – Robert Abele

Bird has enriched the genre beyond the usual hurrah/comic brio with piquant commentary on fan-cultism, our screen-dependent lives, and gender-role biases. In other words, here comes Incredibles 2 to save the day, the weekend, your summer, and maybe even your Marvel/DC/superhero fatigue.

IndieWire — David Ehrlich — B+

Incredibles 2 gets off to a rocky start before growing into one of the great movies of its kind... Once the menacing and mysterious Screenslaver is introduced, inciting a Spielberg-level monorail chase that reaffirms Bird’s lucid gift for kinetic and character-driven action filmmaking, the movie blasts off and never looks back.

Entertainment Weekly — Darren Franich — B+

The thrills are always there, and you can enjoy the jazzy Michael Giacchino score, the sweet stay-at-home-Dad gags. But don’t let the dazzle fool you. Bird’s made the weirdest Pixar movie ever, revolutionary and retro, an anti-authoritarian ode to good parenting.

Variety - Owen Gleiberman

I wish I could say that Incredibles 2, which Bird also wrote and directed, is the great sequel The Incredibles deserves. It is not. It’s got a touch of the first film’s let’s-try-it-on spirit, and it’s a perfectly snappy and chucklesome and heartfelt entertainment, with little retro felicities you latch onto, yet something is missing: the thrill of discovery — the crucial sensation that the movie is taking us someplace we haven’t been.