Fridae

Clearly superheroes and wuxia flicks have been flooding the screen so much in recent years that obviously, time has come to start making fun of them. As seen in two of last year’s hits with Despicable Me and Megamind, superheroes and villains are big business either way.

Despite its title, Mr and Mrs Incredible is thankfully more inspired by the likes of Despicable Me and Megamind than The Incredibles. The Incredibles was not so much about taking on and subverting superheroic ideals as much as it was another way of framing them, which definitely takes more skill to do and requires more savvy with the genre at hand.

Mr and Mrs Incredible refer to two superheroes named Gazer Warrior (his cleverly rendered Chinese name, Jiong Jiong Xia both refers to his Cyclops-style laser blast eyes and his symbol being a popular Chinese internet meme of an actual Chinese ideogram that resembles a frowning or jaded face), played by Louis Koo, and Aroma Woman (Sandra Ng), a walking potpourri who can send men into a trance with the smell of the blossoms she has with her. Long ago, they fought villains before their careers degenerated, as did Metroman in Megamind, of answering increasingly banal requests from citizens and getting jaded with their celebrity status. Gazer Warrior and Aroma Woman head off for a quiet life as normal people, and everything seems perfect with their having bought a lakefront property to spend the rest of their days. Now, if only they can possess the one power they lack…the requisite adrenaline and the urge to make a baby.

Any potential hijinks at it being a superhero/wuxia sex comedy are however, quickly thrown off by the arrival of the Imperial Martial Arts tournament in town. A blatant parody of Jin Yong’s famous and often filmed novel “The Laughing Proud Ones” (笑傲江湖), the Five Mountain Sects arrive to match their skills against each other, unaware that a villain who has mastered the “Star-Absorbing Skill” has infiltrated the tournament and plans to (what else?) become all powerful and rule the world.

Anyone looking for lots of out of this world action will be quite disappointed. In fact, a certain weakness and de-emphasis on the action sequences is one of the strengths of this movie, since it draws you to its strongest points: the chemistry between the central couple. Louis Koo and Sandra Ng are genuinely likable here as a pair of superheroic goofballs who are nevertheless loving and supportive. The action sequences tend towards the laughably absurd rather than well-choreographed, with even more resolutions in Looney Tunes style pratfalls as punchlines than Kung Fu Hustle. In an early sequence, Gazer Warrior faces off a comically inept bandit using the “Toad Style” from Kung Fu Hustle,which consists of inflating your entire body and leaping at your opponent like a cannonball, and defeats him by simply using his laser vision to pop him like a balloon. This remains true up to the final fight, which ends in a rather silly payoff that is however, just as fitting for the film in general.

Mr and Mrs Incredible will not take the place of Shaolin as sheer spectacle, but it does offer an alternative for those seeking something less self-serious, and that revels in its own overblown silliness for a change. It is a good-natured fluffy brained wuxia superhero spoof, and sometimes one does not need more.