Day: October 26, 2004

I haven’t been invited to see The Polar Express (Warner Bros., 11.10), the $200 million-plus, digitally groundbreaking, Christmas storybook flick made by director Bob Zemeckis and star-producer Tom Hanks, despite being invited to the product-reel, dog-and-pony show at the Warner lot a few weeks ago. I suppose there’s a reason for some concern now that Variety‘s David Rooney has called it The Bi-Polar Express and complained that the story doesn’t pay off particularly well. Along with an emerging view that the digitally-composed kids are “dead-eyed” and resemble the alien tykes from Village of the Damned. Plus David Poland declaring that “this thing is one of the most expensive films ever made, and it will not gross [back] its cost at the domestic box office.” All contributing to the basic consensus that November’s big animated feature isn’t The Polar Express but….drum roll….

Brad Bird’s The Incredibles (Disney/Pixar, 11.5)!! This animated comedy about a family of gone-to-seed superhero parents and their two kids, ducking their enemies under the Witness Protection Program but looking to get those old juices flowing again, is looking like a monster hit with all ages. A friend who went to an Academy screening on Monday, 10.25, said, “I loved it…it’s funny…people applauded the especially good parts…it runs about 115 minutes but feels like 80 or 90…and it’s a crowd-pleaser, a blockbuster…it’ll make $200 or $300 million.” I could’ve gone, but I went to the Tom Cruise tribute thing instead. Choices, choices.