Mr. and Mrs. Incredible
aka San kei hap lui aka 神奇俠侶
2011
Directed by Vincent Kok Tak-Chiu
Written by Steven Fung Min-Hang, Vincent Kok Tak-Chiu, and Chan Po-Chun
I’ll be blunt – Mr. and Mrs. Incredible is the best film I’ve seen out of Hong Kong in 2011 so far. That’s either great praise for Mr. and Mrs. Incredible, or a scathing indictment of this year’s crop of movies. It’s both, actually! Mr. and Mrs. Incredible is less of an action fest superhero movie, and more of a film about couples and conflicts that arise in a relationship that just happens to be between two superbeings. And it’s pretty damn good. A costumed period piece that takes queues from The Incredibles and several other super hero in real world pictures, we join Gazer Warrior and Aroma Warrior ten years into retirement as Flint and Rouge, living out their lives in a peaceful village in the middle of nowhere. But fate has decreed that the two superheroes will once again don their uniforms.
The real world super hero subgenre has grown significantly as of late, with storytellers finding the same thing Marvel did in the 1960s, that it is much more interesting to have actual people be the super heroes vs. mythological perfect beings with no problems ever. Movies like Watchmen, Super, and Defendor show real people with real problems donning capes and punching people. Now, the leads of Mr. and Mrs. Incredible don’t have deep psychological problems, emotional abuse issues, anger management problems, delusions, or revenge fantasies brought about by murdered parents. Their problems are much the same as most real couples. Part of Mr. and Mrs. Incredible‘s strength is that it sounds like familiar arguments even as it is surrounded by super hero antics and wacky comedy.
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