Harry here, and the only reason I'm not spitting in jealousy about this fella seeing THE INCREDIBLES so dag gum early is I just left the John Saxon hosted double feature of STRANGE SHADOWS IN AN EMPTY ROOM and BLACK CHRISTMAS... with John standing right beside my chair on the aisle as the last 10 minutes of BLACK CHRISTMAS played and watched him suppress a smile and a giggle to himself as that phone rang. Plus his signature joins Jim Kelly's on my ENTER THE DRAGON one-sheet so... I'm pretty damn frickin' pleased with life at the moment, so Sirius Black seeing a 90% incomplete print of THE INCREDIBLES tonight... well, while I would love to see it in rough story boards and rough animation... just to see the Pixar process unfold, if nothing else... But also, cuz I know so many of them boards were probably done by Brad Bird, cuz... he does that type of thing... sigh... THE INCREDIBLES sounds like a very apt title for this film coming in almost exactly a year from now... Here's the first word....

Hi Harry,    

I attended a general audience test screening of Pixar's The Incredibles in Emeryville this afternoon (lucky me!).  I don't know what I can tell you about it, other than summarizing the story and characters and such, all of which may change in the coming year, I'm sure.  It was very, very rough cut; well over 90% of it was storyboards and rough animatics; there were only two brief shots that could have possibly been completed, but I have no way of knowing whether or not they were.  I'll tell you what I know, then what I think.    

It starts out with Mr. Incredible (Craig T. Nelson) having a really busy day, people robbing banks and blowing up buildings, and he's getting married to Elastigirl (Holly Hunter), when the adolescent president of his fan clubshows up with the intention of becoming Mr. Incredible's sidekick (coining himself Incrediboy), but quickly proves to be a greater liability and is rejected.  The day ends with a would-be suicide victim suing Mr. Incredible for a broken collar bone inflicted while saving his life.  This sets a precedent; superheroes are being slapped with so many lawsuits that the government is forced to set up an protection program, sending Mr. Incredible and Elastigirl to anonymous suburbia to lead normal lives and raise a family.    

Mr. Incredible, known as Bob Parr, doesn't like his new life.  He doesn't like being pushed around by his pushy little boss (Wallace Shawn) or the immoral business he's involved in (he reviews insurance claims).    He tells his wife he's going bowling so that he can listen to police scanners with his friend Lucius Best, formerly Frozone (Samuel L. Jackson).  When he receives a mysterious invitation to stop an intelligent defense robot rampaging a remote tropical island, he accepts, but he can't tell his wife Helen; she's worked hard to build their new life and can't abide his nostalgia for heroics.    

He defeats the robot and comes home, beginning a business relationship with the people who hired him, but his wife becomes suspicious of an affair when she finds a strand of his female informant Mirage's hair on his clothes, until she notices his old costume has been mended, and realizes her competition isn't another woman.     

When Bob leaves for another "conference", she contacts fashion designer Edna Mode, aka "E", the only one Bob would have trusted to do the repairs, who's taken the liberty of designing new suits for the whole family, including angsty pre-teen Violet, who can turn invisible and generate force fields, and rambunctious Dash (guess what his power is), and even baby Jack Jack, whose powers are still unknown.  She learns from E how to find Bob and borrows a jet from the government to go reprimand or save Bob (she isn't sure which).  The two older children stow away, and the three find themselves with Mr. Incredible on the island volcano base of Syndrome, the would-be Incrediboy (Jason Lee), who's made a fortune designs weapons and defense systems and intends use it to destroy the elitist superhero community of which he couldn't be apart.  I was so excited to hear Jason Lee's voice, but less excited about the role he was in; the villain nearly as threatening as one would hope, and while his motives are original and can be sympathized with, there's no question that the character's just pathetic, and kind of annoying (he looks and sounds just like the WB's Freakazoid, a similarity that's even more pronounced in the few CG sequences I saw him in than the 2D storyboards).    

Syndrome wants to send another of his intelligent robots to the mainland to make a little trouble, then orchestrate his own destruction of the robot, making himself a hero - after killing the Incredibles.  He leaves to do this with the family held captive; their escape is aided by his assistant Mirage, and they return to San Francisco to stop Syndrome's plan from exacting too much damage.  His plot is instantly foiled by his own robot, which instinctively destroys the remote control that would deactivate it.  It's up to the Incredibles and Frozone to stop the beast.  After a climactic battle, they do so, and return home just in time to see Syndrome kidnapping baby Jack Jack; the attempt is botched by Jack Jack himself in a display of power I can't quite do justice; in storyboard form it looked like he was emulating between three or four superheroes, including the Human Torch and the Hulk.  At the end of the day, a renewed sense of respect for superheroes is displayed by the public, and the government admits their value to society; their days of living in anonymity are over.    

The growth and unity of the family is every bit as touching as Monsters Inc. and Finding Nemo (well, maybe not quest as much as Monsters Inc., I hold that one pretty high), but the action sequences really hold their own against any other superhero movie.  The humor is more abundant that in recent Pixar attempts and more mature, but still suitable for the whole family (a scene where Mr. Incredible wants a cape on his new suit, but E rattles off endless examples of superheroes who have died in terribly ironic cape accidents; another where Frozone argues with his wife over whether or not he can have his suit as the robot ravages the city right outside their living room window; when Syndrome meets the whole Incredible family, he exclaims "You married Elastigirl...and got busy!").    

One problem I noticed, in the cut I saw anyway, was lack of development in a lot of the individual characters.  We know Mr. Incredible and Elastigirl pretty well early on, but the kids, the villain, the supporting characters we only understand through rather broad generalizations.  Violet feels like an outsider; she has gifts she can't use and has to keep a secret, she assumes she's unacceptable because her abilities can't be accepted.  Dash needs an outlet for his abilities, but his mother won't let him go out for sports, so he makes mischief at school instead.  We don't see much of Frozone, but he's Samuel L. Jackson; very much the opposite of his character in Unbreakable, which despite glaring dissimilarities, this movie reminded me of frequently.    

Every Pixar film I see, I have to stop and consider afterwards whether or not it's the best I've seen yet.  The jury's still out on this one, but I can tell you it was absolutely excellent.  The questionnaire we had to fill out afterwards was completely absurd; it asked what the best scenes and worst scenes were, whether it went too slow or too fast, which characters we liked best.  There were no best or worst scenes, it was executed beautifully.  I hope they don't change anything in the final cut, side from actually animating it this time.  

I don't see myself getting this lucky in the future, but everything you post comes from someone with a name, so if you use this, call me Sirius Black.

To answer some of the questions in Talkback below... Why have a screening at this rough of stage? Well, they always do this with animation, because if you don't test it at this stage, then testing it with finished animation... if you have to change anything... it costs too much to REANIMATE whole sequences. This way, you're testing the ideas and gags... to see if the story works, the characters work... As for, did this screening happen. Yes, I had reports that this screening was set to take place about a week ago.