“The Incredibles,” “The Lord of the Rings”

Incredible as it might seem, the Disney studios are to be congratulated for their moral rectitude. Allow me to explain. Having finally succumbed to renting the DVD of the animated feature film The Incredibles , I was stunned at how good it was. I don’t mean good in the technical or artistic sense, though it is certainly good in both senses. I mean it was good in the good old-fashioned sense of being morally healthy and unabashedly critical of bad or evil behavior.

My only disappointment was not from what was in the film, all of which was delightful, but what was left out. It seemed to me that some of the best scenes in the movie were those that were deleted from it, particularly a candidly outspoken scene in which Elastigirl, or Mrs. Incredible, defends her role as a "homemaker" against the crassly reasoned criticisms of an obnoxious feminist career woman. This one short scene, included as one of the bonus features, is worth the rental cost alone. If you think you’ve seen the film already, think again; you haven’t really seen it at all unless you’ve seen this one hilarious scene. Rent it again. You won’t be disappointed. It’s incredible.

Less incredible, and perhaps only to be expected, is the news that Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh, the dynamic duo who brought The Lord of the Rings to the silver screen, have donated $310,000 from the movie’s profits to fund human embryonic stem-cell research. Tolkien would have been horrified to think that money made from his "fundamentally religious and Catholic" book would be spent in this way. Since embryonic stem-cell research systematically kills thousands of unborn babies, a practice that only orcs would contemplate in Middle-earth, it is clear that Jackson and Walsh have sided with the Dark Lord.

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