Fasten Your Seatbelts, It's Going to be a Bumpy Ride

Rating: 5/10 (29 December 2004)

Robert Zemeckis teams up with Tom Hanks once again in this children's fantasy film about children being taken to the North Pole to see Santa and his world via a magical train called the Polar Express. This is definitely geared more toward the adolescents than the adults. The film has some outstanding animation process which creates a reality out of animation if you will. I personally found the process quite fascinating, but I must confess that I must have looked at my watch at least six or seven times during the course of the film. Never a good sign. At a running length of 99 minutes, The Polar Express seemed more like the Pony Express than Amtrak. There is nothing individually that I can pinpoint as a major, upsetting problem with the film. The animation was terrific, the voices(with exception of Eddie Deezen's which really got on my nerves as it was undoubtedly suppose to)were well-matched to their graphic counterpoints, the song and spirit of the film were nice, and the action scenes leading to the North Pole were exciting and suspenseful - yet, the film for me was rather boring. It really didn't do anything for me . It didn't cause me to hate it, but I said right after seeing it that I had no desire to see it again. Not much really happens in terms of concrete plot. Tom Hanks does some nice engineering as several different "roles" if you will. I think I liked his conductor best. I found Santa to be rather bland - as much of the film chronicling the adventures of the three "lost" children in the village at the North Pole.