Yes, Virginia, a sweet Christmas movie can be sinister

Rating: 1/10 (16 November 2004)

This is the movie for our time: In which not Believing, even in the absence of evidence, even in the presence of evidence to the contrary, is seen as a failing, as a sign of personal limitation. A movie in which thousands of male-only elves gather Nuremberg-style in the vast brick factory town in which they are enslaved and cheeringly salute their huge radiant white master as he emerges from his palace. In which the only annoying character, the only source of even the slightest conflict or disharmony, is a big-nosed glasses-wearing wiry-haired know-it-all kid--a classic and offensive representation of The Jew. In which a character actually says, without irony, that the true spirit of Christmas is what's in your heart. It's also ridiculously badly plotted and conceived. There isn't the slightest threat at any time, there isn't even the simplest reason given for why the train has to be on time -- not even an old standard like getting the gifts to the kids to the good children on the other side of the hill. So all the chutes and ladder chases, while fun at first, and gorgeous (the runaway ticket sequence is in itself a classic, exciting piece of film-making), get screamingly boring because A: nothing bad is going to happen if the heroes fall and B: nothing good is going to happen if they succeed. The first fifteen minutes are fantastic--even kind of rapturous--because for that amount of time it works like Van Allsburg's books do: the pure wondrous delight of the images. But what follows is devoid of humor, irony, authentic wonder or compelling storytelling, and also gives us the sappiest most forgettable songs imaginable. Did the filmmakers--who have done such spectacular work on other films--fail to note that Shrek didn't go for 50's greeting card melodies--that Shrek used an oddball, relatively obscure Leonard Cohen song, sung by the ironic, out-of-the-mainstream Rufus Wainright, to back up the love montage? It says something really good about our country that Shrek, with its irreverent humor and authentic sense of wonder, is going to beat the red velvet pants off the box office of Polar Express.