[7.6/10] It’s a shame that Pixar has become more and more of a sequel factory. While the likes of say, *Toy Story 3*, suggest that the studio can still maintain a high level of quality while repurposing familiar characters, the Pixar brand name itself had become so good that it was one of the few locales within tentpole filmmaking that executives would take chances on original properties with the understanding that the studio’s name alone would give folks reason to come to the theater. The quality of the output hasn’t necessarily diminished, but there’s a loss of the new, as fellow critic Anton Ego might put it, that is regrettable.

Enter *Incredibles 2*, an energetic, perfectly enjoyable, well-made sequel that is ultimately good enough but forgettable. Arriving in theaters fourteen years after the original, it takes place just months after the events of the first movie. A block-busting fight with the Underminer leads to the government’s super-relocation program to end, and causes the Incredibles (and Frozone) to accept some help from DEVTECH, a private company led by slick salesman and Incredibles fanboy Winston, and his more down-to-earth, genius inventor Evelyn.

The DEVTECH campaign selects Elastigirl as its vanguard, which means she has to be away from home, and Mr. Incredible has to look after the kids. In the process, Bob Parr has to adjust to being out of the limelight and the trials and travails of domestic life, while Helen has to handle her anxieties about being separated from her family while tracking down the villainous Screenslayer, who commandeers the local airwaves to hypnotize everyone within eyeshot.

The film works as a character drama. Bob’s exhausted adventures trying to deal with a daughter whose love life he inadvertently throttled, a son whom he can’t help in school, and a baby with unpredictable and uncontrollable powers are endearing and relatable, even when framed within the superhero guise. At the same time, his only barely-restrained jealousy that his new benefactors think Elastigirl can do the hero thing better than he can is an interesting wrinkle, one that allows the movie to deftly explore the growing pains of changing times flipping the traditional gender roles with work and family.

At the same time, the film reserves some good character stories for Helen Parr. While occasionally *Incredibles 2* gets Elastigirl lost in its fairly standard conspiracy plot, there’s rich material to be mined from Helen having to be apart from her kids in the hopes of opening doors for them in the future, while worrying about how they’re doing without her. And while given less time by comparison, the kids’ smaller concerns and squabbles are briefer but nicely crafted as well.

The best element of *Incredibles 2* is the same thing that stood out in its predecessor -- the way that the dialogue and conversations about these ideas, the superheroic turned into a family matter, feel layered and real despite the outsized setting. When Bob and Helen chat on the phone or express their anxieties and admit their jealousies before bed, there’s a truth to the complicated issues bound up in this change of lifestyle for both of them, and their whole family, that helps the emotional conflict hit home.

By the same token, while the first *Incredibles* movie was nothing to sneeze at in terms of its visuals, *Incredibles 2* is a giant leap forward. Between a rave-like battle between hero and villain that finds artistry (and, fair warning, audience members with epilepsy) in its flickering black and white, and a tête-à-tête between Violet’s force-field projections and a rival’s portal-creating powers that shows boundless relational creativity, the movie has all manner of impressive sequences.

But more importantly, in a medium that tends toward the fantastical, there is something unbelievably expressive about the characters in the film. Subtle changes in body language or facial expressions or just the barely noticeable tilt of the head make the Parrs feel so much more alive when they’re hashing out their concerns and/or hypnotic suggestions. Beyond the flashy set pieces, the advances in animation and particular choices made in the film do a great deal to make the Incredibles seem like real people and not just supers on the screen.

*Incredibles 2* has something of a muddled message about those screen-based supers. In keeping with the first film’s “villain who has a point that takes things way out of proportion”, the Screenslayer laments the world’s adulation for and dependence on superheroes. While in-universe, the baddie is referring to actual caped crusaders, the bad guy’s manifesto serves as a thinly-veiled metaphor for the omnipresence of superhero media in American culture.

With the villain’s focus on hypnotizing anyone with a screen, writer-director Brad Bird bakes in a criticism of people using superheroes as escapism, as an excuse not to live their lives or take action to make the world a better place, and instead rely on our fictional better selves within those screens for comfort and anesthesia. There’s not really a firm rebuttal, except for the fact that the good guys in the film do, in fact, fight the good fight, and expose the Screenslayer as malicious rather than crusading. It’s an interesting idea to play with, even if *Incredibles 2* never really nails it down beyond the first layer.

Even with all that going for it, *Incredibles 2* is merely quite good. It’s an enjoyable two hours at the cinema, with a solidly built movie that features earned family drama, some exciting battles, and the endearing comedy that comes from the interactions between a returning Edna Mode and the ever-mercurial Jack Jack. That is more than enough for any film, especially one trying to recapture the magic nearly a decade and a half after its predecessor made its debut.

But Pixar has, or at least had, set a standard to where “quite good” can only be a disappointment. There’s nothing wrong, or at least nothing bad about *Incredibles 2*, but it rarely, if ever, grazes greatness when dusting off these characters from 2004, and you can’t help but the resources and creativity used to make it being taken away from some original movie that might otherwise have broken new ground for the studio and for animated movies more generally.

It’s churish to slate a film for what it isn’t, let alone for the opportunity cost of whatever movie might have taken its place. If you enjoyed the first *Incredibles* movie, you will undoubtedly enjoy this one as well, which expands on the first and finds new ways to explore the idea of superheroes and family and the two intertwined. But if you’re waiting for the next Pixar movie to knock your socks off, and remind you how irrepressibly creative and daring all ages movie-making can be, then you’ll walk out of *Incredibles 2* thinking the studio is still trying to find its supersuit once again.