CHAPTER 4
1. The Incredibles (2004): The film starts during a Golden Age of superheroes, also known to the public as "supers", when government-sponsored superheroes assist a grateful public with everything from freeing cats stuck in trees to foiling bank robberies. The plot itself begins when Bob Parr, a.k.a. Mr. Incredible (Craig T. Nelson), who is gifted with super strength, saves a man attempting a suicide. He then foils a robbery by the villain Bomb Voyage (Dominique Louis), while being harassed by Buddy Pine (Jason Lee), a young fan who wishes to be his sidekick. When Bomb Voyage plants a bomb on the young would-be superhero, Mr. Incredible manages to dislodge it, but in doing so, causes a train wreck that injures many. He then races to his wedding, where he marries Helen, a.k.a. Elastigirl (Holly Hunter), a dexterous, flexible super. Βoth the suicidal man and the victims of the train wreck sue the superheroes community for prevention of suicide and injuries sustained in these events respectively. As part of the government's settlement, all superheroes are placed into a government-sponsored protection program similar to witness protection, and forbidden to use their powers for heroism.
The film then jumps 15 years later; Bob and Helen Parr have settled into relatively normal suburban lives raising three kids, Violet (Sarah Vowell), Dash (Spencer Fox), and baby Jack-Jack (Eli Fucile). The children have powers which reflect their personalities; Violet (a shy 12 or 13-year-old) has the power of invisibility and the ability to create force fields, while Dash (a hyperactive 10-year-old) has super speed. Jack-Jack appears to be a normal baby without powers. Bob, stuck in a thankless job at a corrupt insurance agency, laments the passage of his superhero glory days. He and his friend Lucius Best (Samuel L. Jackson), a cryokinetic super and fellow retiree called Frozone, still occasionally listen to police radios and secretly aid the authorities, much to the consternation of Helen. On one such night, the two are watched by a mysterious white-haired woman. The next day, Bob is called into the office of his unsympathetic boss. As he is receiving a lecture, Bob notices a man getting mugged outside. Bob offers to go help, but his boss threatens to fire him if he does. Enraged, Bob throws his boss through several walls, ironically losing his job anyway.
Upon arriving home, Bob discovers a video message in his briefcase featuring Mirage (Elizabeth Pena), the white-haired woman from before. She appears to know his secret identity, and offers to hire him (at a salary triple that of his current one) to subdue a renegade robot, the Omnidroid 8000, on Nomanisan, an uncharted island. After telling Helen and his family that he is going on a business trip, Mr. Incredible completes the task. Upon returning, Bob finds his life has begun to improve. He begins spending more time with his family and starts to work out more (Bob had become immensely obese due to his years of inactivity). Over the next two months, Bob maintains the image of still being employed, but secretly works out in preparation for his next assignment. One day, Bob notices his super suit had gotten damaged in the Omnidroid battle. He takes the suit to his costumer, Edna Mode (Brad Bird), for repair, but Edna offers to create a new suit for him instead. Meanwhile, Helen begins to have doubts and starts to suspect Bob of having an affair.
Bob is again summoned to Nomanisan, but is overpowered by an improved Omnidroid, and encounters Buddy Pine again, now revealing himself to be a psychotic villain and wealthy weapons designer called Syndrome. Buddy had been embittered upon rejection by Mr. Incredible, and wished vengeance upon his former hero. Mr. Incredible escapes and dupes Syndrome into thinking he is dead. He then learns that Syndrome used previous versions of the Omnidroid to kill other supers, and that the device learns and adapts from any previous defeat.
Discovering Bob's old patched up suit, Helen contacts Edna, who insists she come visit. Edna reveals she's designed matching super suits for the entire family, and also that each suit has a homing beacon on it. Using this, Helen learns where Bob really is, but her use of the signal device results in Bob's capture. Reluctantly donning her new super suit, Helen flies a private jet to the island. Nearing the island, she discovers Violet and Dash have stowed away, wearing their own suits. The jet is attacked by missiles from Syndrome's base, and Helen attempts to evade them, while telling Violet to put a force-field around the plane. Neither are successful, and the plane is destroyed by the missiles. Helen and the children narrowly escape the explosion, and make it to the island.
Helen urges the children to stay hidden in a cave, and pursues Bob herself. However, the cave is found to direct the flames of a rocket, and the children are forced to flee it. Upon being discovered, the children are pursued by Syndrome's henchmen. Meanwhile, Helen discovers Bob with Mirage, but realizes that Mirage was merely there to rescue Bob from capture (Syndrome had previously allowed Mirage to be used as a hostage by Bob, though Bob had proved too "weak" to kill her). After a brief argument while running through the island, Bob and Helen later meet up with their children, and together impressively take down their pursuers. Syndrome, however, appears and personally takes the family captive. He informs the family of his ultimate plan: unleash the Omnidroid on Metroville, and use his most impressive weapons technologies to stop it, making himself appear to be a superhero. After playing the superhero game for long enough, he would sell his weapons, so everyone could be "super", thus making the true superheroes less impressive.
Violet is able to release herself and her family from confinement, and the family attempt to return to Metroville to battle the Omnidroid. They find themselves in need of the same kind of rocket used to launch the Omnidroid to Metroville, and Mirage gives them the command codes to operate it. In the city, the Omnidroid "learns" that Syndrome's remote controls it and blasts it off of Syndrome's wrist. Shooting one of his rocket boots, Syndrome is knocked unconscious into a building. Bob and his family then arrive and with the help of Frozone, subdue the robot. Returning home, they discover Syndrome attempting to kidnap Jack-Jack, who then flies off to his jet above. Jack-Jack then begins to display a whole slew of powers, causing Syndrome to drop him. Bob then throws Helen to catch Jack-Jack, as well as his car at Syndrome, knocking him into one of the jet's turbines. Syndrome's cape is caught in the turbine and he is sucked in, causing the jet to explode; the wreckage falls on the family's house, but Violet creates a force field to protect them from the falling debris.
Three months later, Bob is now content with their civilian life, Dash controls the use of his powers in track events, and Violet, having found confidence, is asked by her heartthrob on a date. However, a new villain, the Underminer (John Ratzenberger) appears and attacks the city. The family members don their masks, and prepare to fight anew.
2. Allo Allo (1982): Set during World War II, 'Allo 'Allo! tells the story of René Artois, a French café owner in the village of Nouvion (the town square was based on a courtyard at Lynford Hall, Norfolk where the pilot episode was shot). Germans have occupied the village and stolen all of its valuable artefacts. These include the first cuckoo clock ever made and a painting of The Fallen Madonna by Van Clomp (known to those who have seen it as The Fallen Madonna with the Big Boobies ). The commandant of the town has decided to keep them for himself after the war and forces René to hide the painting in his café. Hitler also wants the painting for himself, and sends Herr Otto Flick of the Gestapo to the town to find it. Flick, in turn, conspires to keep it for himself. The paintings are duplicated by a forger, get mixed-up and put in knockwurst sausages. One is sent to Hitler on an ammunition train which gets blown up, one is hidden and the other is eaten for dinner by Flick himself.
At the same time, the café is being used as a safe house for two brave but clueless downed British airmen. René is forced to work with the all-women Resistance, who would otherwise shoot him for serving Germans in his café. The far-fetched plans of the Resistance to get the airmen back to England, which always fail (except at one point when a truckload of British Airmen mixed with disguised German Generals, in that case it wasn't successful in bringing their two Airmen back to England as the truck was filled to capacity), are one of the main running gags of the series. As part of these plans, the Resistance have placed a radio in the bedroom of René's mother-in-law. This secret communication device between London and the resistance (codename "Nighthawk") is hidden under the bed, and incoming messages are signalled by triggering the light bulbs concealed in the bed-knobs, leading the elderly mother-in-law to cry "Ze flashing knobs!" The title of the show is inspired by the way the French say hello on the telephone ("allô" is the normal French way of greeting someone over a remote communication system).
René is also trying to keep his affairs with his two waitresses secret from his wife. In addition, the women-only Communist Resistance members are plotting against René for serving Germans and working with the Gaullist Resistance. Ironically, the Communist Resistance only blow things up for money. The only reason that they do not shoot René is that their leader is in love with him, a fact he has to hide from both his wife and his waitresses. Furthermore, the seemingly gay German Lieutenant Gruber is also continually flirting with René. These situations are even more humorous by the fact that René is not exactly the best looking man in France, is hardly a hero, and is often forced by his wife to do missions and secret operations. One memorable situation was when Edith pointed a gun at René to stop him from running away to hide with his cousin (when interrupted by the Colonel and the Captain, he said that his wife was proposing to him).
René's death at the hands of a German firing squad was faked in an early episode, and throughout most of the show's run, he has to pose as his own twin brother, and to convince his wife to marry him again in order to regain ownership of his café. In the meantime, René's wife is wooed by Monsieur Alfonse, the village undertaker, who is torn between his love for her and his admiration for René whom he considers to be a true hero of France.
These few plot devices provide the basic storyline throughout the entire series, on which are hung classic farce set-ups, physical comedy and visual gags, amusingly ridiculous fake accents, a large amount of sexual innuendo and a fast-paced running string of broad cultural clichés. Each episode builds on the previous ones, often requiring one to have seen the previous episode in order to fully understand the plot. At the start of each subsequent episode, René would summarise the plot to date to the audience in a gag based on the "As you remember..." device commonly used in serials. In re-runs, local TV stations have shuffled the episodes, making the plot synopses useful. A recurring theme within individual episodes is that of independent plots aiming for a common objective ending up cancelling out each other's effectiveness. It has also been noted that 'Allo 'Allo! seems to parody the drama series Secret Army, following a similar plot and with characters that are very similar to the drama.
3. Garfield’s Halloween Adventure (1985): Garfield is awakened by the Binky The Clown Show and learns that it is Halloween. Garfield enlists Odie's help in Trick-or-treating, hoping to get twice as much candy for himself. After trying on different costumes in the attic, Garfield and Odie settle on pirate costumes.
Soon they are out trick-or-treating amongst other children in the neighborhood. After several encounters with what appear to be real ghosts and goblins in costume, the pair find that they have visited every house in the neighborhood. Garfield notices more houses across the river, so he and Odie take a boat to get to the other side.
Odie misunderstands Garfield's command to "put out the oars" and throws the oars overboard, leaving the boat adrift down the river. Soon the boat arrives at an abandoned dock near a run-down mansion. Garfield and Odie venture inside the home to warm next to the fireplace and are startled to find an old man sitting in a nearby chair. The man tells the pair that they have chosen the wrong night to visit - 100 years ago that very night, pirates, pursued by government troops, buried their treasure in the floor of the mansion and signed a blood oath to return for the treasure at midnight 100 years later. The old man claimed to be the cabin boy, now 110 years old, from this very pirate ship. Before Garfield and Odie could decide on leaving, the old man steals their boat and leaves the two behind.
The clock chimes midnight and Garfield and Odie watch as a ghostly ship materializes on the river and pirate ghosts emerge. Garfield and Odie hide in an empty cupboard as the ghosts reclaim their buried treasure from the floorboards of the house. When Odie sneezes, it alerts the ghosts to where they are. Making a run for it, Garfield and Odie jump into the river to escape, where Odie has to save Garfield as he cannot swim.
The pair wash ashore and find their boat with the candy still inside and untouched. They go home happy and Garfield rewards Odie's rescue by giving him his share of the candy.
Garfield later turns on the television and sees the same old man, this time in a pirate hat, hosting an all-night pirate movie festival. Garfield abruptly turns off the television and goes to bed.
By Richard Moody & Liz Ross
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