This review will contain spoilers.
The movie is pretty fun. The characters have the same chemistry, more or less, that they had before, and some of them at least have a development arc (although curiously, some of them which get a lot of screen time, do not.) The action scenes are well done. (My kids are universal in their praise of their improvement over the first movie.) The setting is extremely well animated, and significantly expanded, in some ways. There's a bigger cast of characters and a wider place in which they play, and yet at no point does it feel forced.
As Daddy Warpig noted; it's not perfect, but still better than the last two Star Wars movies combined. (I'm not sure exactly what he means by that, but given that The Force Awakens contributed very little, and The Last Jedi was actually a negative, being better than those two isn't saying much. It's probably better than the two spin-off movies too, but not combined, and it's not a slam dunk against either Rogue One or Solo either one.) After as long as we've all waited, it was fun to see the characters put through their paces again, and for the most part, they didn't really miss many beats. (I should note that my daughter was highly distracted, and mentioned many times that the characters all sounded old. But nobody else appears to have even noticed that.)
So... that's the good news. And it's quite a bit, even though I've breezed through it quickly. It's worth seeing. It's even worth seeing in theaters. It's even worth seeing at full evening price, although I hardly ever see any movie at full evening price anymore; I almost always buy the last showing at matinee price on a weekday. This is significant to me because it means that I don't contribute to the all-important opening weekend box office very much, if at all. Considering that I saw this movie on the Monday afternoon after opening weekend, I didn't at all.
At the end, though, most likely Incredibles 2 will be seen as relatively forgettable. Like The Force Awakens, it's fun the first time you watch it, but as it ages, its flaws will become more obvious and harder to ignore. At least that's my prediction (after watching it once.) What are these flaws?
First off, at a high level, the plot is actually exactly the same as the first movie. In spite of what you thought happened in the first movie, we start off with superheroes again facing legal pressure to not be superheroes. Once again, a mysterious and obviously wealthy donor recruits superheroes (in this case Elastigirl instead of Mr. Incredible—more on that later) to do some superheroing on the side. And once again, they turn out to (OMG! Big surprise!) actually be the villains that need to be faced at the end. Once again Frozone and the kids get involved and the family has to pull together, overcoming their own separate issues, to defeat the villain, because none of them can do it alone. Once again they save the city right there on the same waterfront at the last minute and once again the people all cheer and it looks like the supers can come out of hiding.
And once again, there's even a somewhat gratuitous visit to Edna Mode's place to get a new suit and some exposition.
The devil is in the details of course—considering that Edgar Rice Burroughs is my favorite author, it might seem a bit rich for me to be complaining about rehashed plots. Then again, ERB's series tend to fall off in interest level quite rapidly after the first story arc is done too, don't they? This problem doesn't make the movie any less fun to watch (once, at least) but it will almost certainly contribute to its eventual downfall after we're more used to it. From a story perspective, this not only doesn't raise the bar, but it significantly lowers it.
Another significant turn-off was the obnoxious you go, grrl feminism about Elastigirl and the subsequent hapless, bumbling husband jokes about Mr. Incredible being left at home. While I certainly admit that this could have been worse, and I kind of expected it to be worse given how much Disney hates American culture and American tradition, it could have been worse isn't, of course, all that much of an endorsement. It was present enough that it's hard to ignore. But, it was undercut by two things: first, once Bob kinda finally gets over himself and dives head-first rather than somewhat reluctantly and resentfully into being the guy who stays at home, he actually is pretty good at it after all. Arguably, he was better at that than he ever was at selling insurance in the first movie. (Sadly, though, this means that Bob's emotional character arc is almost exactly the same as it was in the first movie, even though he's doing less fighting of robots and more dealing with math tutoring and Jack-Jack's ever growing repertoire of out of control powers.) Of course, in the end, his stint as Mr. Mom doesn't last very long; really just long enough for him to prove that once he puts his mind to it, he can do it just fine. Secondly, one of the main proponents for You Go, Grrrl feminism was actually the villain of the movie in a plot twist that nobody didn't see coming. (The only question was: was it going to be both the brother and sister, or just the dry, obviously manipulative sister who was bad, and her brother really was the positive, excited, idealistic guy that he appeared to be. The answer is the latter.)
A side effect, perhaps, of this you go, grrrl attitude was that Elastigirl had to already be pretty perfect or something. She couldn't really have any weaknesses, because that would admit that there are things that she can't do, and the Mary Suewalker characters can't ever be that lest some poor, hateful and unlikable blue-haired landwhale have feelbads or something. Because the plot actually focuses quite a bit more on her than the last movie did, this is to the plot's detriment.
Or maybe it's just a side-effect of the fact that Mr. Incredible is just a more interesting and charismatic character, and the movie was a little overstuffed, so Elastigirl ironically got way more screen time but no emotional character development arc at all.
Anyway, we'll probably buy this movie. It's pretty good. It's worth seeing, if you haven't already. But it's a rather pale imitation of the first movie in many ways.
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