>>124705823Stereotypes, you ask? Here’s a few (cue drum roll):
>The All-American Muscle-bound Idiot (Mr Incredible)>The Put-Upon Housewife And Suburban Mom (Mrs Incredible, née Elastigirl)>The Shy, Moody Goth Girl (Violet Incredible)>The Brash Blond Brat (Dash Incredible)>The Superfly Pimp-Style Black Superhero (Frozone)>The Blonde, Husky-Voiced Femme Fatale (Mirage)And that’s just the main cast. In the bit-parts, we have The Wimpy Old Lady Whose Cat’s Stuck Up A Tree, The Effete French Villain (with, of course, a Little Black French Moustache) and The Miserable, Grey, Penny-Pinching Capitalist Boss. The boss is actually relatively original: he doesn’t actually smoke cigars, cackle while counting his money, or have a bent nose. Evidently Bird feels French people are a safer target than Jews or African-Americans. Mind you, the roles for the Black characters are remarkably original: in addition to Frozone, we have The Security Guard! A Man Driving A Van! And Honey, Frozone’s girlfriend, who never even appears onscreen, but whose raucous voice we can hear runnin’ at the mouth as she informs Frozone that he ought to spend mo’ time wit her. Frozone, incidentally, is five minutes late saving the world because, although his swish flat is immaculate, he has mislaid his superhero suit, and we get a “comical” sequence in which he sprints round the flat trying to unearth it, a victim of his own incompetence.
The only characters who were not prehistoric stereotypes were, well, modern stereotypes. These were at least slightly interesting. Edna Mode, who designs suits for superheroes, was a send-up of Anna Wintour and got by far the biggest laughs; the discovery that she was voiced by Brad Bird himself, however, had me thinking less “amusing parody” and more “misogynist parody”. And why wasn’t she a gay man… actually, scratch that, the French guy was bad enough. And then there’s the villain; but I’ll get to him later.
