Has not aged well

Rating: 5/10 (5 December 2012)

I don't think time has been very kind to "The Polar Express", at least not for me. It certainly hasn't been kind to the motion capture effects, making the characters look stranger than ever (and keeping me at arm's length from the film).
I remember getting caught up in the rhetoric when this thing was first released, and paying to see it in IMAX. That did wonders for the roller- coaster camera effects, but on the small screen, it's apparent that that coaster ride is the frame on which the movie hangs. That "thrill-a- minute" preoccupation was distracting when I was more interested in seeing the gorgeously rendered North Pole. And the schmaltzy "message" heaped on top of the event film that this was engineered to be just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
And in the interest of admitting personal bias, the songs are what really drag this movie down for me. I'm not a musical guy, so they were tolerable back in '04. The bad news is that they've tended toward the grating in the ensuing years.
The good news is that Hanks still shines. Let's not kid ourselves, he carries this movie, playing most of the main characters and lending the film its heart and soul.
But Ebert was wrong when he said this is destined to become a holiday classic. It doesn't belong anywhere near the likes of "A Christmas Story", "It's A Wonderful Life" or even "Scrooged".
I'll stick with the Van Allsburg book.
5/10