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Chugging into theaters Wednesday is The Polar Express (G), the most ambitious, expensive animated film ever produced. At a reported cost of $165-million, Oscar-winning director Robert Zemeckis wants to rewrite the book on animation, while remaining faithful to Chris Van Allsburg's children's book, a favorite since its 1985 publication.
Zemeckis teams again with his Forrest Gump star, Tom Hanks, to tell the story of a nameless boy who doubts the existence of Santa Claus until climbing aboard a magical locomotive for a North Pole visit. That old-fashioned tale gets newfangled handling in The Polar Express, an animation technique that digitally captures the movements of live actors and transcribes them into animation: kind of like Andy Serkis' portrayal of Gollum in the Lord of the Rings trilogy and megapixels ahead of the humans "drawn" for Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within and Shrek.
That enables Hanks to play several roles: the train's conductor, a hobo hitching a ride, even Santa Claus. You'll recognize the face, but it won't be a flesh-and-blood image. Hanks also handles the physical action for the doubting child while Daryl Sabara (Spy Kids) handles the dialogue. Other actors whose performances were digitally captured include Hanks' bosom buddy Peter Scolari and the late Michael Jeter.
A review of The Polar Express will be published in Tuesday's Floridian.
- STEVE PERSALL, Times film critic