THE INCREDIBLES

Yes — without much hesitation. Brad Bird, who also made The Iron Giant, has built a superhero movie that doubles as a family drama, and the family drama is the better half. Bob and Helen Parr are retired heroes trying to hold a household together, and the film finds them so honestly that a father, mother, and teenage daughter can each recognize themselves in a different character.

The action is fast, clever, and genuinely thrilling — closer to a spy movie than a cartoon. Underneath it, the film preaches without being preachy: self-sacrifice, humility, marriage, and repentance all get real screen time, and the villain's selfishness is answered rather than admired.

The only caution is mild: some characters get hurt or die in stylized action sequences, and there are a few exclamatory "My God"s. Even the film's own director thought it could have earned a G rating. This is a movie your whole family can watch together and talk about afterward.

Mr. Incredible and his fellow superheroes once saved the world in public. Then the lawsuits came, and the government quietly retired them all. Fifteen years later, Bob Parr is an overweight insurance adjuster married to the former Elastigirl, raising three super-powered kids who've been taught to hide what makes them extraordinary.

When a mysterious call offers Bob one more secret mission, he can't resist — and what starts as a chance to feel like a hero again turns into a threat that reaches all the way home.

Four stars, and the film earns every one of them. This is a genuine tour de force — Pixar's usual leap forward in lifelike animation, paired with a script that never lets spectacle outrun story. The action is fast-paced and compelling, filled with deliberate nods to classic superhero and spy films that reward repeat viewings.

What sets it apart, though, is character work rare in any genre: Bob, Helen, Violet, and Dash are drawn so precisely that viewers see their own family in them. The pacing rarely sags, the humor lands, and the emotional beats — a husband learning humility, a wife holding a family together — carry real weight. It's a movie built as carefully as it's animated.

This is a film that celebrates what Scripture celebrates. Self-sacrifice, the primacy of family, love between spouses, compassion for children, remorse followed by repentance — all of it is treated as the real heroism, more central than any superpower. An overt church wedding anchors the story's moral seriousness. Bob's arc is the clearest example: he lies to protect his family out of pride, but the film doesn't let that stand — he comes to grips with what matters more than being a superhero, and he apologizes for it.

The villain, meanwhile, is a portrait of what happens when resentment and the demand to be special curdle into revenge. The film supports the good and rebukes the bad without ambiguity, which is part of why it plays so well for churches looking for a story to preach alongside.

The only content worth a parent's notice is a handful of exclamatory "My God"s and action violence that is, in the film's own telling, more thrilling than gory — enough for a PG rating that its own director admits was a choice, not a requirement.

At its heart, this is a story about a man who has to lay down the identity that made him feel significant in order to love the people in front of him — which is a smaller version of the call Christ gives every disciple: "For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it" (Matthew 16:25).

This is one of those rare family movies that's just as smart as it is fun — thrilling enough for kids, honest enough for parents, and built around the conviction that family, humility, and repentance matter more than any superpower. Our answer is simple: worth the trip.