The First Kiddie-Xmas Film Noir

Rating: 5/10 (21 December 2004)

I'm a huge fan of Chris Van Allsburg, and especially his book, "Polar Express." I love Tom Hanks.
I really wanted to like this movie ...
Reviewers said that the motion capture technique resulted in freakishly animatronic looking characters. At first that aspect of the film did bug me, but I did get used to it.
But ... I really didn't like this movie. It was too dark, and it wasn't dark because it had a few scary moments; there's more to it than that.
First, what's good. "Polar Express" contains some stunningly lovely and/or remarkable scenes. The words on a page are seen from below the page, as if the page were transparent; wolves and eagles follow a slip of paper as it is blown about by the wind; Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby Christmas hits play in a North Pole toy factory.
All very worth seeing, worth, perhaps, the price of admission for hardcore film fans.
But the movie was simply too dark and too PC for me. And it reaches too far.
The PC aspect of the movie is an insertion that doesn't exist in the book. The main character is provided with a companion, an African American girl.
The animatronic look of the motion capture character is unpleasantly emphasized by the animatronic characterization of this girl. The script bends over backward to make her purely good, cool, and admirable, with no negative qualities, and that effort is obvious and alienating.
American audiences are grown up enough that we can accept a flawed -- i.e., human -- African American character. We don't really need a cartoon version of the character Sidney Poitier played in "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner." There is a Poor White Boy character added, as well. Whoever wrote this character has no idea what it is to be poor, and treats this character with zero respect, and a great deal of condescension. The "lesson" this poor boy is meant to learn at the end will have self respecting poor people gagging.
Finally, the movie was just too dark, with none of the redemption richer movies have been able to offer. There are scenes of perilous efforts to walk atop a moving train during a snow storm, and scenes of vulnerable children trying to cross a dangerous bridge.
"Wizard of Oz" and other classics contain similarly scary scenes, but those films also offer deep and moving scenes of genuine empowerment and redemption. I missed such redemptive, powerful scenes in "Polar Express." This film will have its audience for whom it works perfectly. It does offer scenes as stark and striking as anything from German Expressionism.
What I missed were the warmth, the depth, the heart of the best of "Wizard of Oz" or "The Little Princess" ... or the Chris Van Allsburg book, "The Polar Express."