A somewhat 'Incredible' DVD

There's a burning question hovering about in the heads of Hollywood's power players these days; that question being "Is Steve Jobs' Pixar Animation Studios even capable of making a film that doesn't win the hearts and dollars of tens of millions?" Apparently not, as the near-universal critical and monetary praise of Pixar's latest effort, "The Incredibles," would show. Not having seen the film when it was in theaters last November, I had to assume Pixar had done something right, seeing as it took me 10 phone calls and about 4 gallons of gas to even find a copy of the film available to rent.\nWithout any hesitation, I can call this Pixar's best film to date and possibly even the best animated film since Disney's "Fantasia" in 1940. Keep in mind, coming from me, calling something the best animated film ever is kind of like saying it's on par with "The Phantom Menace." Regardless, director Brad Bird's tale of former superheroes exiled into a soul-crushing suburban existence by a lawsuit-happy society only to be reinvigorated to their former glory by way of extenuating circumstances rings true on many levels, and is capable of being just as entertaining to adults as it is to children -- only on an entirely different level.\nExtras in this double-disc set include feature commentary by writer/director Brad Bird as well as the film's accomplished animators, a new short called "Jack-Jack Attack" and another standard set of Pixar bloopers and outtakes that once again fail to amuse because they are in fact not actually spontaneous moments. However, the most valuable extra is the purposely shoddily animated "Mr. Incredible & Pals" cartoon with hilarious commentary by Samuel L. Jackson in Frozone mode.\nDespite my usual stubborn bias against most all things animated and bearing in mind I was not the world's biggest "Finding Nemo" fan, I found "The Incredibles" to be triumphant if only for its sheer visual splendor (this being Pixar's first film with honest-to-goodness, fleshed-out human characters) and the quality of its screenplay, which balances laughs with brutal honesty. The brilliant sheen of the computer graphics on display here was simply made for a good DVD presentation, and it's safe to say the animators truly outdid themselves.\n"The Incredibles" boasts enough syrupy sweet moments to keep the kiddies and their legal guardians happy, but at the same time there are moments of sadness, emotional distress and even terror rarely seen in contemporary animated films.