Review: The Incredibles Discussion Guide

The Incredibles Discussion Guide
From: LifeTeen, Inc. (Spotlight Resource)
http://ym.lifeteen.com/default.aspx?key=freeres_home&__DocumentId=1074

This discussion guide for Pixar's The Incredibles is a sample from Life Teen's newest resource called In Focus: A Movie Guide for Catholics. In Focus is a guide for youth ministers, catechists, teachers and parents that will help young people see movies in a new way. All too often teens absorb popular media without question or discernment; In Focus helps reveal how the person of Christ and the teachings of the Catholic Church are relevant in the world today.

This resource breaks open The Incredibles with a complete synopsis, Scripture and Catechism references, and discussion questions. It also offers some information on Catholic Undertones in the movie and offers suggested activities that will help take the issues brought up in the discussion to life in the daily lives of the teenagers.

In Heft's Passing On the Faith: Transforming traditions for the Next Generation of Jews, Christians, and Muslims, contributing author Christian Smith comments that religious communities "are up against a number of significant social and cultural forces that make [the task of nurturing faith] quite difficult." He mentions that the relationships between adults and teens - particularly parents and their teen children - serve as a source of much of this tension. The Incredibles Discussion Guide does an excellent job of getting teens to analyze the relationships in their families, troubleshoot potential obstacles that threaten their family personally, and take action to improve communication with their family now - all within the context of the move The Incredibles (which deals with multiple family relationship issues).

At the same time, Smith accuses religion classes of dumbing down their content in favor of activities that are more engaging and fun. Spending a full hour and a half watching a fun movie in order to get to a few good questions about family relationships may seem like a poor use of time in that context. The resource does offer suggestions on ways to incorporate the discussion using only certain clips of the movie rather than the whole thing that would probably help this problem.

Other than a few comments on Catholic symbolism that is present in the movie, there is not a lot of overt Catholic teaching that comes from this activity. While the authors do a good job of pointing to some solid religious resources (including The Catechism, and books like My Life with the Saints by James Martin and The Founding of Christendom by Warren H. Carroll), it would be nice to see more integration of religious concepts not watered down by Pixar in the activity. For example, a comparison between superheroes and saints or a look at Catholic Social Justice teaching in light of the actions of the superheroes would have add a little more substance to the activity.