A major dramatic train wreck

Rating: 3/10 (29 January 2005)

Despite its groundbreaking, impressive use of "motion capture" technology and its rich gloss, this is a very uninvolving movie.
Its cardinal sin is its main character, the "Hero Boy". He's a total bore. He doesn't drive the plot. He doesn't want anything. He simply doubts the existence of Santa Claus. His juvenile cohorts are not much more interesting, either. There is a token "black girl" who is, of course, a font of wisdom and strength. There is also a Jewish "Know-It-All" who is just an irritation.
Tom Hanks, for some bizarre reason, plays all the main characters. Or rather, they used his data to create them. One character, a ghost-like "Hobo" who rides the roof of the Polar Express, is the most intriguing, but he's creatively restrained by the film's desire to appeal to the widest possible audience in the universe.
You know you are in trouble when a film's best sequence is a detour well away from the main plot. In this, that sequence involves a ticket that flies out of our hero's hand, flits about FORREST GUMP-style and is blown across several valleys and carried by various creatures across skies and snowy wastelands until it is fatefully returned to its origins.
The storyline is 100% predictable and the 3-D is accomplished but unnecessary.
What burns this costly turd to the ground, ultimately, is its PC nature. It plays safe with everything. Despite one or two concessions to minorities, it depicts a cloyingly middle class, white bread version of Xmas that made me want to vomit.
Alan Silvestri's score shoots its dramatic wad way too early and because Zemeckis uses it so blatantly and shamelessly to make us "feel" things that are simply not there, it comes across as gratuitous.
I really wanted to like this film. I wanted to be caught up in the magic its advertising promised. I wasn't. I was bored.
Consider the difference between this and Miyazaki's SPIRITED AWAY, MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO or KIKI'S DELIVERY SERVICE. Miyazaki's films are about characters who want something first, concepts second. They take risks, they're not consciously PC and they earn every ounce of an audience's trust and involvement.
The same can also be said for THE INCREDIBLES, TOY STORY and FINDING NEMO -- all great movies because their heroes want something badly.
POLAR EXPRESS is a major dramatic train wreck.