Sarah Vowell makes teenage awkwardness audible without treating it as a joke in itself. Her high, tremulous voice is unusually well suited to Violet Parr in The Incredibles, where we find the daughter’s grievances as deserving of attention as her parents’.
Fi1m perspective
In The Incredibles (2004), Violet Parr sounds uncertain and irritated at once, and Sarah Vowell lets us hear both. Her high, tremulous voice suits an insecure teenager, while her deadpan delivery gives the complaints some bite. We warmed to Violet because her frustration is allowed to matter as much as the adults’ dissatisfaction. There is room for her to be unreasonable without the performance asking us to dismiss her, and that makes her a convincing member of this particular family.
Brad Bird’s writing is essential to that effect: he lets the children have grievances without reducing them to obstacles for their parents. Craig T. Nelson’s Bob and Holly Hunter’s Helen have their own complaints, and Vowell and Spencer Fox, as Dash, sound as though they belong alongside them. Vowell’s voice is conspicuous, but it does not make Violet feel imported from another kind of film. The nasal edge is insistent, but the dry humour keeps the performance from becoming a prolonged display of awkwardness.
Bird heard Vowell on This American Life before casting her, which helps explain why the performance feels so specifically chosen. Her work on the programme began in 1996, and the wry, self-deprecating delivery of her commentary is useful to Violet. That dry way of speaking allows a complaint to be funny without making the person expressing it seem ridiculous. The part brought wider recognition, but historical nonfiction remained her main work.
The later screen work includes a small appearance as a shopper in Please Give (2010) and a return to Violet in Incredibles 2 (2018). We would be cautious about treating one unusually apt piece of casting as evidence that every director should find her a part. Start with the first film, where Bird understands that a shy teenager can still have plenty to complain about.
Biography
Sarah Vowell, also credited as Sarah Jane Vowell, is an American historian, author, journalist and actress. She was born on 27 December 1969 in Muskogee, Oklahoma, and raised in Montana. She holds a BA from Montana State University and an MA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Vowell is best known for voicing Violet Parr in the Pixar films The Incredibles (2004) and Incredibles 2 (2018). She has also appeared in Bored to Death (2009), Please Give (2010) and A.C.O.D. (2013). From 1996 to 2008 she was a contributing editor on the radio programme This American Life, and she has written seven nonfiction books on American history and culture.
