The Polar Express 2004
I remember seeing the previews for this movie and thinking the animation looked kind of freaky. Computer generated people just don’t look right. So I never saw it at the theaters. Still, everyone I know that saw it enjoyed it, so when I had a chance to borrow the DVD I decided to watch.
At its heart this is actually a pretty good movie. Roger Ebert said it was an instant classic and it definitely has the hallmarks of a classic Christmas story like Scrooge, the Grinch, or Rudolph. The animation is still creepy, though not as bad as I first thought. One review said they were turned off by the cold, dead eyes of the characters. Either they fixed that for the DVD, or it wasn’t as bad as that reviewer indicated. There are still weird things. When people walk or run, they don’t quite move in sync with the surface they’re walking on. Also the kids in particular seem to have oversized hands made out of flesh-like wax. And they have a hard time capturing expressions on some of the kids’ faces.
But that’s all just part of the style of the movie and maybe isn’t any more germaine than why Donald Duck doesn’t wear pants. In any movie, the story is what determines whether the movie is any good. There are scenes that seem like they are tacked on (and certainly a lot was tacked on since the original book was only 20 pages or so long), but everything holds together. By the time you are tired of being on the train (there is a surprising amount of detail about the train, including how to drive it) they arrive at their destination.
It’s not a great movie. I think you have to grade it on the curve a little bit and give it extra points for being for children, for having a nice story, and for having Tom Hanks over and over again. If you do that, you can easily come up with a B+ grade. It is worth watching, maybe even every Christmas.
Owned on: Digital