Wow! This is a fabulous movie - enjoyable, beautiful, intelligent and fun; but never too arch or clever to alienate an audience. The explosions, the deaths, the stretches of cartoon but still fatal violence means that little kidlets are out. However, for everyone else this is a funny, intelligent and beautifully presented movie.
The movie starts with a reel of mock interviews with some leading superheroes - Mr Incredible (who is, basically, incredible - super strong, superfast, kind, etc etc), Elastigirl (who is very "flexible"), Frozone (the power of ice with any available water) - about what they do, how they feel about what they do. But due to the interference of Mr Incredible's biggest fan, the superheroes all have to put their glory days behind them and melt back into normal life - and it seems this exposes the one fault in them all.
We see how everyday life suppresses them - by stopping them from using their superpowers, the beaurocracy and tedium is cutting away at an essential part of who they are. Mr Incredible (now Bob Parr) and his wife of 15 years, Elastigirl (now Helen Parr) find that marriage, and raising children (who themselves have superpowers they are not allowed to use), is not even remotely easy for people who could once save the world over and over again. There's a great deal of comedy to be milked from these, and as much pathos - the squabbling between husband and wife is familiar, and the kids bicker as siblings will; it's just that they can occasionally break out unusual methods of dealing or coping with difficulties.
The adventure part of the story kicks in when Bob is offered a job that promises to return the invincible greatness he once exercised, but it is all shrouded in secrecy, and anyone familiar with the trope of cartoons knows this cannot be a good thing. The script is great - it plays with the conventions of comic books and cartoons, either parodying them or updating them without resorting to mean-spirited mocking. There's a bit where Frozone (now Lucius Best) recounts an old victory where the villian cannot help but start "monologuing" about his inevitable victory on the cusp of destroying the superhero - thus giving the hero plenty of time to escape. Now, who hasn't laughed at moments like this in other movies? However, in a clever self-reference, when Mr Incredible is later trapped by the big bad of the movie, Syndrome interrupts himself mid-monologue and calls it out with a laugh.
A lot of thought has gone into the design of the film. The superpowers are not random, but correspond to the character and what they would like to be, what is hidden in them (for example, the teenage daughter is very self-conscious and thus has the power to become invisible; when she has gained confidence in her ability to use her superpower for good, she gains self-confidence in her "normal" life). The baby has indeterminate powers, as anonymous as any other baby, and basically, when its powers do manifest it's a great surprise that had the theatre laughing in an equal mixture of shock, amusement, and delight.
The animation is gorgeous. The colours are bright and bold yet elegant - which is another fun reference from a great side character, the costume designer Edna Mode - acceptably real while maintaining that cartoon feel. The action is played at a furious pace, but isn't tedious - part of the fun is seeing how their superpowers get them out of each situation - and the set design is just...wow. The science-fiction feel of Syndrome's island hideaway, the minimalist yet technologically eye-popping mansion that Edna lives in, the bland split-level the Barrs find themselves living in the heartland of suburbia - there's such attention to detail and character that builds a wonderful film to watch.
