It was an abysmal year for superheroes in Hollywood. Consider the output of the last 12 months. Catwoman proved that flaccid storytelling will undermine the box-office clout of an amply cleavaged hardbody. The Incredibles’s Heavy-handed morality and a sadistic, one-note storyline managed to rnder an angsty revenge tragedy monumentally dull. Hellboy’s brooding, limpid palette and brilliantly vulnerable protagonist were squandered by a script that fails to understand basic character development and narrative arc. Even Spider-Man 2, which is amongst my top 20 of 2004, despite a few moments of emotional deliverance for Spidey, is nonetheless overwhelmed by a pervasive sense of pessimism and despair. When Pixar’s The Incredibles debuted, it was, if not a redemption for the comic-book hero, at least like a bout of good relief pitching—a shot in the arm for a genre that has grown increasingly tired. This sublimely airy creation shucks off the portentous self-importance evident in nearly every superhero flick since Superman (1978) to the present, making it one of the true gems of the past year

The Incredibles bears all the hallmarks of the other films that have made Pixar the most bankable studio in operation today. It finds the perfect balance between slapstick comedy and pathos-laden character drama and is underpinned by CGI animation worthy of all superlatives. But what makes Bird’s outing so endearing and fresh is that, behind the stunningly detailed animation, the meticulously perfect re-creation of tacky Sixties aesthetics, and the clockwork comic ballet, there lies a fanboy’s beating heart. The Incredibles lovingly and knowledgeably sends up comic book stereotypes in a story that sums up every geek’s fantasies: What happens to superheroes when they stop being super? What if Mr. Incredible married Elastigirl? If they had kids, what powers would they have? During its opening sequence, a hyperbolic montage of stock rescue situations—a cat in a tree, a police chase, a bank robber, a suicide jumper and a runaway train all draw Mr. Incredible’s attention in a deliriously giddy ten minutes—the film revels in the potential for animation to resurrect the best of comic books, but this constant stream of outrageous possibilities comes crashing down to earth because The Incredibles forces its heroes to deal with shallow, ordinary people and the vagaries of the real world. The film addresses the question peripherally posed by Simon and Garfunkel’s “Mrs. Robinson”—where have all the heroes gone?—and answers it: Sixties suburbia. Where a last minute rescue was once good for the cover of Life magazine or a key to the city, the average citizen is more liable to sue superheroes for the damages and injuries ancillary to their work. With the government forced to foot the legal bills, super-heroism becomes financially untenable, and so the powers that be reach a compromise: litigation will stop if heroes cease and desist in saving the planet. Superheroes are shrouded under Witness Protection Program-style relocation, forced to live out their lives as members of the unremarkable masses. And so this potential one-note samba of a comic-book flick exploring the secret life of superheroes is spun out into all its melodious, harmonious permutations.

The Incredibles is one of the few films that genuinely possesses intergenerational appeal. Instead of pandering to adults with a few warmed-over pop-culture impersonations (cf. Disney’s Aladdin), it’s underwritten by a sustained, reasoned, and subtly humorous critique of American culture. Adult delight is also in the details, a litany of luminous story moments: domestic chaos heightened by competing super-abilities; a midlife crisis replete with a cry-for-help convertible; experiences of adolescent and grade-school angst made worse by truly remarkable gifts; hyperbolic physiques—aptly-described by Kevin Smith as being from the “big pecs, big tits” school—gone to seed and replaced by equally voluminous beer guts and birthing hips; costumes that come not from mysterious sources but from a designer who is equal parts pithy fashionista and moral mad scientist.

Thus The Incredibles is not just about using superheroes as foils to lambaste this country’s homogeneity. It’s equally concerned with paying homage to postwar superheroes, lovingly sending up their flaws—which is the highest form of flattery—and attending to all the extra stuff too: the obsessive comic book hysteria that inevitably goes along with it. Mr. Incredible’s nemesis (every hero must have one) is his spurned number-one fan, embittered by that one night when his idol wouldn’t let him serve as “Incrediboy,” a self-styled crime-fighting sidekick. Even when he grows up to become Syndrome, he still can’t stop “geeking out” at the things his sometime personal hero can do. It’s the best rebuke (and celebration) of excessive fandom since William Shatner’s appearance on Saturday Night Live when he told Trekkies to get a life.

Many, my editor included, have decried that setting the film in this decade amounts to ideological cowardice, reasoning that writer-director Brad Bird comes desperately, tantalizingly close to making a substantial commentary on contemporary politics but ultimately balks because he places the story in the safe remove of a sentimentalized decade. But I would argue that the choice of period is nothing short of perfect for exploring the problems with Americana. What better milieu for illuminating our disillusionment with heroism than a decade that witnessed the assassinations of JFK and Martin Luther King? What better locale to highlight the interminable drudgery of suburban sameness than the pre-fab ranches that once dotted the sprawl? And (in a slightly anachronistic turn) how better to skewer the ridiculous extremes of American litigiousness than to fault it for the disappearance of Superman and his kind? Some may find the attitude of The Incredibles a little disquieting, because in the final stanza, the superhero parents encourage their speedy, Flash-like son to finish a close second in his track meet—an ostensible celebration of mediocrity if ever there was one. But I choose to see the film’s politics in a different way (which admittedly may be a fan-wank in itself). The image of the super-family is one that subverts the way corporate America wants us to behave: beset by homogeneity but fiercely asserting our individuality.