beautiful images, uneven story

Rating: 7/10 (4 December 2005)

"Polar Express" is an animated film version of the beloved children's book by Chris Van Allsburg. In order to give the film a true "storybook" look and feel, the filmmakers used real life actors, then digitally altered them to make them appear more like animated figures to help them blend in with the backgrounds. The result is a frequently dazzling, though often strangely creepy work, depending upon the individual scene.
The movie tells the tale of a boy who is just beginning to question the existence of Santa. One Christmas Eve, while he is lying awake mulling over his dilemma, a mysterious train magically appears in front of his house, carrying with it an enigmatic conductor who bids him enter. Torn between his dual impulses towards both doubt and curiosity, he ultimately hops on board, only to find it filled with other specially selected children all on their way to the North Pole.
On the positive side, the film features gorgeously designed and lovingly detailed backdrops that transport the viewer to a genuinely entrancing world of imagination and fantasy. Director Robert Zemeckis and his many animators and visual effects specialists bring this world to life through a dazzling combination of rich colors and uninhibited movement. Any single frame of this film could be used in an illustrated version of the original text.
The glorious visuals alone help the film to overcome the somewhat episodic nature of the storyline and the built-in repetitiveness that comes along with it. However, the movie runs into its greatest trouble with the look of the human characters. Although they are leagues ahead of the people in two-dimensional animation, there is a certain dead-eyed quality to them that is often disconcerting. Moreover, Santa's elves, creepy enough in close-up, look distressingly like a massive colony of swarming red ants when the camera pulls back. Thus, the movie ends up being at its weakest where it should be at its strongest - in conveying the innocent magic of Christmas. On the other hand, the final scenes posses a subtle tenderness that conveys the spirit of the season without becoming overly mawkish or sentimental about it. And Tom Hanks does first-rate work providing the voices for virtually all the male characters in the film.
"Polar Express" may never achieve the classic status of the best holiday films, but some of its images will make it worth re-visiting every few seasons.