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"The Polar Express" was directed by Spielberg protégée Robert Zemeckis (who also directed "Beowulf"), and it is based on a book by Chris Van Allsburg which Tom Hanks was a big fan of when he was kid. It involves a boy who is selected along with many other kids to take a train ride to the North Pole to visit Santa Claus and his intricate operation of present giving. This voyage will have this boy meeting many other kids on their way as well as many other characters, most of who are played by Tom Hanks. That's right, star Tom Hanks plays about six different parts in this movie, which has me wondering if this was done to save money on what must have been a very expensive movie. Among the parts he plays here are a hobo who may not actually be real, Scrooge, and Santa Claus himself. But the most prominent role he plays in this movie is that of the Conductor of the Polar Express itself. He's a man who is constantly running the train on a "tight schedule" and who cannot help but be occasionally convinced that one of these kids is determined to keep the train from reaching its final destination. He also has this wonderful talent for punching out your tickets to form certain words in them. I mean really! He does it so fast! How does he do it? The big thing about this movie is that it is an animated movie by the way of motion capture. This has become a popular way of making movies in an animated fashion as actors where these suits and have these tiny white balls glued to their face and bodies. With the help of computers, which at this point we cannot live without, they can be captured on film and manipulated to look like they are in a place that is too expensive to build as a set. It is remarkable stuff however, and it could be further proof that actors will never be replaced by technology because we need them to make the technology effective and work. I cannot begin to tell you how relieved this makes me! I was surprised at how much I liked "The Polar Express." It's not a perfect movie, but it does have a heart, and the emotions here are much more genuine than in other Christmas movies of this type. It is also exciting as we see the train and the main characters struggle to stay on board as the train goes through many treacherous parts in its journey to one of the coldest places on the planet. Seeing it in 3-D is a major plus as well because the effects seem so real that the kids in the audience were literally trying to grasp at the snowflakes that were falling from the screen. Heck, I even found myself doing that a couple of times. That's the one thing I want to mention; the audience was full of kids there with their families, and this initially was a problem for me. I saw "Cars" a year ago at the El Capitan in Los Angeles which was full of parents who were completely incapable of keeping their kids quiet throughout the entire movie. Here I am trying to watch one of the weaker movies from the Pixar catalogue, and there's little boy right in front of me who cannot get himself to sit down and kept asking his mother for more candy among other things. If you can't shut your kids up, then don't take them to the movies! Stay at home and watch "Finding Nemo" on DVD. My niece has already seen it hundreds of times to where her parents can recite every line (not that they want to mind you). But at the same time, seeing these kids in the theater get totally sucked into the magic of the movie with the 3-D technology. Hearing them talk back to the screen, especially my little niece, brought a smile to my face as they got completely caught up in the journey that this movie took them on. This is the kind of movie you want your kids to see. When it first came out, many found the technology disturbing and scary, but that's really ridiculous. It just doesn't look like the animated movies that they loved from their past. If there is anything that takes away from the experience of "The Polar Express," it's that lame ass Glen Ballard song that some of the characters sing in one scene, and which you hear again at the end credits. I am sick and tired of crappy love songs by white guys! They reek of lameness, and this movie is not even a frickin' musical! If I want to see a musical, then I'll go out and see "Sweeney Todd." Speaking of which, I actually still need to see that and "There Will Be Blood." While part of me would like to see Zemeckis go back to directing live action movies, I really did enjoy "The Polar Express" and its journey to the big man at the North Pole. Between this and "Beowulf," I have to say that this is the better movie. It has since become an annual tradition to release this movie back in theaters at Christmas time along with other movies like "The Nightmare Before Christmas." It's either that, or "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation" which was the last really good Chevy Chase movie. Don't worry about parents telling you about how creepy it is. This is fine for the whole family. email this review to a friend
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