The Polar Express

Many film fans believe Robert Zemeckis' career began its decline with 2004's THE POLAR EXPRESS, his first fully animated feature.  Others believe the film deserves rank with the holiday classics.  I might be on board, so to speak, with that first thought.  Prior to this movie, Zemeckis' resume is filled with beloved box office hits and endearingly quirky cult items.  I was and am a big fan of most of those.  I only saw THE POLAR EXPRESS about a week ago for the first time after years of indifference.  It looked so, odd.  The motion capture style seemed to work for a speeding locomotive but not so much for human faces.  The trailers did little for me.

Watching the entire movie did not change that opinion.  The faces of the children who find themselves on the titular steam train resemble rejected Edvard Munch renderings and those strange masks seen on the schoolkids in PINK FLOYD: THE WALL.  Tom Hanks, who plays the train's conductor and a few other parts, looks like little more than a CGI workprint.  But thankfully, most of the rest of THE POLAR EXPRESS looks sensational.  So many fascinating back- and foreground details in which to get lost.  Distractions to the story, perhaps? Not necessarily a bad thing.

Based on Chris Van Allsburg's same titled picture book, the film significantly expands its simple tale of a boy who's lost his Christmas cheer and is beginning to suspect Santa Claus is a fantasy, or at least resembles his parental units.  When the train appears in front of his house on Christmas Eve, he only hesitates for a moment before joining a carful of other youngsters on a journey to the North Pole.  Along the way, the train stops for a lonely, impoverished kid who lives, yes, on the other side of the tracks. 

Before we finally get to Santa's workshop and hordes of (curiously creepy looking and acting) elves, there are frantic efforts to retrieve a wayward ticket, skids across frozen lakes, a herd of caribou blocking progress, and tracks that resemble a roller coaster.  Once again, Zemeckis employs his knack for exciting set pieces and tense suspense milking.  Alan Silvestri again provides a rousing score that at times will remind you of BACK TO THE FUTURE.  It's a fun ride.  Even with some awkward musical numbers.  Beware also that Steven Tyler of Aerosmith has a cameo.

The story is less impressive, though its essential message is that Belief is Good.  Look inside your heart.  Older kids and adults have "forgotten how to listen".  Santa is real, O.K! Get it? Anything deeper will vary by viewer.  Zemeckis' and William Broyles Jr.'s screenplay does lay a heavy hand and is only occasionally effective.  I was mostly unmoved by this spirited but also curiously somber movie.  The characters were quite bland and uninteresting, though Hanks' time conscious conductor was always entertaining.  There is enough here to make it a minor Christmas tradition, but in the end the entire thing just feels like a video game (which in fact spawned one not long after its release).  I'll bet this would've been quite a bit better as a live action picture.  But that screenplay would still need some serious elfin magic.

P.S.: The bratty, know it all kid is voiced by actor Eddie Deezen, who played a role in Zemeckis' wonderful debut movie I WANNA HOLD YOUR HAND.  His presence is one of several winks to/in-jokes involving the director's past films.