Today was the last day in a three-day long garage sale at my house. I've been dealing with occasionally very nice people, but the folks in and out of my driveway have been heavily peppered with those folks who are not only aghast that you want $10 for something you paid $100 for six weeks ago, but are indignant about it, too. As if rudeness is going to make me cave. As I told one stupid woman, "I can take it to [insert local charity organization here] and get a tax write off for the full retail price.." Either way works for me, and grown people throwing temper tantrums only makes me want to punch them until they stop twitching. So basically, I needed something REALLY light in terms of fare.
It never fails to amaze me that Pixar hasn't had a loser yet, at least not one that I've seen to date. I probably couldn't list everything I've seen that Pixar's made, but at this point in their run (even in the wake of the Disney merger/buyout) there isn't a single bad movie and I don't know that there are many studios out there where I can make that same claim. I know folks loved Finding Nemo, but this is really my favorite offering from Pixar. I'm a comic book fan, so that helps me like this, but I like that the story is fairly mature, even though the target audience for this movie isn't. The premise is fairly complicated: superheroes retiring and going in to what amounts as "hiding" in order to avoid legal complications and fall out from their efforts to save the world. Even when you ignore the bit about the superhero, I like that this introduces kids to concepts like responsibility and consequences. People who have read my rants on the subject (or listened to them) are probably rolling their eyes, but I think these are concepts that younger Americans seem to be missing during their formative years.
Variations on this premise have added some drama to several comic book story lines. It also is a major part of the story line for Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2, which has grown to be one of my favorite video games released over the last few years. The whole battle between the superhero is over whether the government has the right to force heroes to register legally and become the equivalent to federal marshalls in the wake of a terrible event wherein a battle between villains and heroes goes awry and a whole town is wiped off the face of the Earth. Nifty stuff if your particular flavor of geek runs in this direction.
The story isn't the only thing I love about this movie. While the characters are obviously based on (mostly) Marvel Comic favorites, specifically The Fantastic Four in the case of the leading characters, they have personality quirks all their own to separate them from their inspiration characters. I like it even better that these guys, despite being heroes, still make mistakes and struggle to overcome their bad choices and fix the things that go wrong in response. If you're a kid, you have to like that these kids are so very... capable. Having superpowers helps, but they have a moral compass and for the most part use that to make sure that their actions are in the right.
I don't have much else to add on this subject. Even if you don't have kids, this is worth checking out. It seems like I keep seeing this on TV of late. I think once or twice on Cartoon Network and a few other times somewhere else. Check your local listings if you want to save the cost of a rental.
