3:10 to Mediocrity

Rating: Null/10 (28 December 2007)

We of the Western cultures long ago passed a point of no return in how we take to heart the meaning in our various holidays. The big ones that we hold important and channel so much energy into -- namely, Christmas -- were subverted somewhere along the way, transformed into such highly refined empires of commerce and greed that even healthful sentiments such as, "The true meaning of Christmas," are little more than corporate slogans, arbitrary noises sounded to make the trivial holiday-shopping frenzy seem more meaningful. Then there's the whole sticky matter of religion melded with the modern iconography of Santa, et al. True to superstitious nature, everyone acknowledges it on some fundamental level, but only enough so that their cognitive abilities don't bother to contemplate. It's been so long, so sustained, we just feel cozy taking it for granted.
From its inception film has been active in shaping and influencing society's attitude towards this expansive partnership between non-thought and advertising. This ungainly cartoon is just one of the latest advertisements, taken from a children's book similarly devoid of nourishment but rich in vaguely alluring, winter-glossed imagery. A greater sin to me, personally, is that it is a modern animated film that does not exploit the possibilities of its nature, something that should be commonplace now that we have a few fine examples out there. Unlike the artists at Pixar, who understand the importance of visual imagination and give us worlds that exist in fuller dimensions than the "real" world of film and its constraints imposed by that physical contraption, the camera, this team puts a tight leash on their visuals so it looks as if we could be watching a story shot in live-action, with all its related limitations of space, but with a candy coating of digital animation to make it "other-wordly." How tame. How abominably dismal and lacking in adventure.
There's a lot of action and commotion, sure, most of it involving the train, but observe how it's all blocked. You'll notice it's no more advanced than what we usually see grafted onto a CGI-assisted live-action movie. It's about as dimensionally thrilling as, say, that lousy Grinch movie from a few years back.
Of course, many people will embrace this because marketing forces tell them it is good and such forces are most persuasive at Christmas time, when treacly sentiment provides an attractive defense for ignorance.
Still, I beg of you, if you have children and insist on letting TV and movies help raise them, don't put them on this train. It is a murderer of the imagination, too much an emblem of our Macy's Christmas spirit.
Blake's rating: 1 (out of 4)