Not For Little Children!!

Rating: Null/10 (14 November 2004)

I cannot comment on the entirety of the film as about twenty minutes into it, my 5-year-old son, a train maniac bar none, said loudly into the darkness, "I don't want to watch this!I want to go home!"The scene was the one where the boy is frantically chasing after "Hero Girl" and the Conductor, as she is (perhaps) about to be thrown off the train for losing her ticket.We left, after I had sat through the appalling "Hot Chocolate" scene, and noted the obvious pregnancy of the mother figure in the house scenes -I wonderhow that aspect figured in the original story?But I digress.Fortunately the theatre refunded our tickets, and I took my son to buy a Thomas the Tank Engine DVD.Now, mea culpa, I did read a small sign stating that there were scenes possibly frightening to children in the film, but the film is rated G, where no such warning is made, nor should there be in such a rating.The film is a bloated version of the charming,quiet book, and I am disappointed that Van Allsburg, a co-producer, allowed such mishandling in the name of Hollywood glitz and $$$.Again, I didn't get to see the rest, but given the establishing tone of what I did see, I doubt that even the "redemption" of the cynical boy at the end was really as wondrous as the ending in the book, where the reader can share in the "hearing" of the magical sleigh bells that the already stone-eared parents cannot register.I am thankful that my son wasn't taken in by all this over-hyped technological wizardry, and I hope Santa brings large lumps of coal to Zemeckis, Van Allsburg, and Hanks for this non-wondrous train wreck.