a little creepy in some unexpected ways, though should be a delight for kids

Rating: 6/10 (12 February 2007)

Maybe seeing The Polar Express would benefit from seeing it again on a big IMAX screen like Robert Zemeckis intended (it's been playing steadily the past few years in limited holiday IMAX runs with good results). But this isn't, if memory serves me, really one of his best films. It does contain that cheerful, strange holiday spirit that's associated with many seminal works (and like Christmas Carol there is a level of much needed darkness, like with the side-character the hero boy runs into on the train who looks like he's been slumming it in coal). There's even some suspense thrown in for good measure at times, like when the polar express comes into the city, but meanwhile our main kid characters are going underground and trying to find another way out to get to all the excitement up above. And it's a daunting task from Zemeckis and Hanks to pull all this off anyway, so as a technical marvel of animation and innovation it stands right alongside Who Framed Roger Rabbit as a grand achievement. But I'd be lying if I thought it wasn't just a wee bit creepy too.
The motion-capture technique which makes up the spine of the picture is sometimes stilted and a little, um, just weird for me, though maybe some kids will gravitate to it more than I. The songs are also a downer, as high-flying as they get in spots (the conductors' song on the train), seeing Steven Tyler was painful in this situation, and the sappy song thrown in at one point reminded me of the lesser songs I heard in animated movies as a kid. And yet, even with the problems I had with the Polar Express, it achieves what it sets out to do with enough confidence to make it a "treat for the family", as the cliché goes, and may attract them even more than I or repel them even more-so. It has its moments of ingenuity, and a great chase bit on the train involving lots of ice on the tracks. That it's less than the sum of its parts isn't unimaginable either.