Such a waste.

Rating: 3/10 (29 November 2005)

I'm with the Grinches on this one.
I'd never heard of the book (after my time, I'd guess), so I watched the DVD without preconceptions. Okay, maybe a positive one, since Zemekis has directed some of my favorite movies.
First, the technical problem: I have high hopes for CGI characters to reach truly lifelike status on screen. Unfortunately, as Polar Express shows, the technology isn't there yet. Instead, we see characters that sometimes seem lifelike, but aren't quite. It's like Pinocchio, where we think there's a real boy there, but the face is still just wood.
Then there's the story, or lack of same. A boy, at the age when one teeters on the edge between belief and disbelief, takes a magical train ride to reaffirm his belief in Santa. Good for a short picture book, but far too thin for a feature film.
So what we get is mostly filler. Long, boring sequences which might have been good in themselves, but here merely seem necessary to expand the length. So we watch a ticket float through several adventures in the hope that it will land somewhere and the plot will progress.
I'm not sure who this film was intended to satisfy. Old timers like me will be bored. Younger children will be terrified. (You wanna see Santa? You've gotta go through pure hell first!) Somewhere in the middle, enough people liked it to bring in the big bucks.