Jean-Paul’s Rating: 3/5 stars

Bottom Line: Incredibly weird introductory short. Main movie has moments, but often feels lost. The Jack Jack stuff is fun and inventive as is the final fight sequence.

Let’s talk about “Bao”, shall we? There’s going to be some pretty big SPOILERS here because I don’t know how else to talk about this short without revealing the big moment so skip this paragraph if you’d rather not know. “Bao” is the introductory short that has become a mainstay of the Pixar universe. Boy, is it weird. And depressing. A Chinese woman makes bao (Chinese dumplings) for her husband who quickly devours them and leaves her to go to work.Feeling ignored and sad, she eats her bao alone. Her last Bao suddenly comes alive and anthropomorphizes. She raises the Bao from infancy to adulthood in a series of touching vignettes. When the Bao brings home a white girlfriend and is going to leave with her to start its own life. She begs and pleads with the Bao to stay, but the Bao insists on leaving. Instead of allowing this to happen, the woman eats the Bao. Holy crap, yes, she just ate the Bao! WTF?!?! She immediately regrets it and is super sad about it, but the damage is done. The Bao is gone. It is all then revealed to be a dream as her real son who looks very much like the Bao comes home with his white girlfriend and mother and son reconcile and they all make bao together. There is so much to unpack here. First off, let it be said that I am not remotely “Bao”‘s target audience; no kids, no plans to have any, and I abhor parental possessiveness as if children are something you own. But while the plot did not speak to me, there is a lot to learn from the short. Chinese culture permeates “Bao”. There’s the woman’s marriage, the woman’s possessiveness, the woman’s downright rancor at the son going out with a white girl, and I’m sure many other aspects that I just don’t understand. The best thing about “Bao” is how refreshingly honest it is. It is also the first Pixar short directed by a female, which is awesome/sad. Out of 20 films, just one woman. Maybe that will change now.

On to “Incredibles 2”! I have less to say about this one. It was, at points, fun, but there was a lot of setup and the plot is kind of see-through. It is definitely one of Pixar’s lesser endeavors. That doesn’t mean it’s not worth watching, though. Everything with Jack Jack is hilarious and well choreographed. The family dynamic is interesting, if a little stereotypical. They get into the inherent sexism of that stereotyping, though, which is nice. The final fight scene is pretty darned cool as all the various Supers use their powers in interesting ways. Of course, we have to ignore that there was a much simpler solution to the entire problem to see it all, but whatevs!

Somewhat surprisingly, the children in the theater (of which there were unsurprisingly many) really seemed to dig the movie despite what I considered slowness. At least one parent also really liked the movie as she laughed loudly at just about everything. Her laughter was often more funny than what was occurring on screen. So yeah, kids like it, parents like it, I thought it was fine and worth seeing. Even Pixar’s poorer attempts tend to be good enough to be worth seeing. What else is there to say?