When disagreements erupt at the dinner table in the Parr household, it pays to put away the good china. Instead of flinging mashed potatoes and peas, the Parr siblings antagonize each other with force fields and Mach 3 pinch-wars. Mom uses her elastic limbs to drag the kids apart while Dad — who bench presses locomotives to keep in shape — delivers a stern warning to the children not to use their superpowers during supper.

Such is one of the many brilliantly zany moments in “The Incredibles,” an ingenious marriage of domestic angst and superhero fablism from Pixar and writer/director Brad Bird (“The Iron Giant”). Dazzling both in its wealth of wit and crisp computer-animated visuals, it raises the bar for Pixar so dramatically that once again we're left to wonder what the seminal digital production house (“Toy Story,” “Finding Nemo”) will do for an encore.

Set in what appears to be the early 1960s — Bird and production designer Lou Romano fill the screen with mod sports cars and angular, efficiently appointed ranch homes — the story fuses elements of “The Fantastic Four,” “True Lies” and, somewhat debatably, “American Beauty.” Forced into an anonymous government relocation program by frivolous lawsuits and a resentful public, superhero spouses Bob Parr (formerly Mr. Incredible) and Helen Parr (formerly Elastigirl) try to adapt to life after crime-fighting, leading normal suburban lives.

It hasn't been an easy transition for the Parrs. Their Flash-like son, Dash (Spencer Fox), is inching into delinquency, making life miserable for teachers too dull-eyed to catch his lightning-fast pranks. Eldest child Violet — voiced with perfect tremulous uncertainty by comedienne Sarah Vowell — is shy and withdrawn and resentful of her special abilities, including invisibility and force-field conjuring.
Most miserable of all is Bob, voiced by a booming Craig T. Nelson (“Coach”). Sulking through the workday as an insurance claims adjuster, Bob misses his glory days so much that he sneaks out once a week with an old superhero buddy, Frozone (Samuel L. Jackson), to cruise the police scanner and foil crimes pro bono.
When a mysterious third party comes to Bob with an offer of under-the-table superhero work, he snatches at the gig and keeps it a secret from Helen (Holly Hunter), who's too busy raising the two older children and an infant to actively pine for her days as a slinky, building- bounding bachelorette. Summoned to a volcano lair in the South Pacific (nifty special effect), Bob gets to prove his mettle against a killer android (also enormously nifty) and rediscover his old superhero self. Empowered, with money in his pocket, he buys a sports car, shaves off some pounds and gets frisky with his wife. Helen, naturally, thinks he's having an affair.

“The Incredibles” follows a fairly standard blueprint laid out in “True Lies” and, more recently, “Thunderbirds” — but it hardly comes as a disappointment when Bob's secret employer turns on him and Helen and the kids have to rekindle their long- dormant powers to save the day. In fact, it's crazy-exciting and the expected messages of family togetherness in the face of mortal danger carry surprising power. There is, one might suspect, a touch of Sept. 11 vigilance in Bird's scripting, especially when Helen warns her kids about bad men who won't hesitate to kill them just because they're children.

Child-jeopardy, adultery, terrorism metaphors — it might all seem a bit intense in the abstract, but Bird touches on these themes with enough tact and subtlety that they'll fly over the heads of younger viewers like Superman on a beeline. Besides, “The Incredibles” is fun, with plently of raring, headlong action scenes that will leave viewers of all ages spellbound. Jackson's Frozone has an especially ticklish mode of locomotion, gliding across carpets of ice that he shoots from his own fingertips, like some supernatural Olympic speed-skater.

“The Incredibles” probably won't get as much respect from hard-core genre buffs as “Spider-Man” or its sequel did, but the fact of the matter is, Bird's movie beats the vaunted web-slinger like pounding an insect with a shoe. It also augurs a tough road ahead for the producers of the upcoming “Fantastic Four” movie, because to be this enthralling, they'll have to be fantastic indeed.