Perfectly enjoyable little festive fantasy with impressive animation

Rating: Null/10 (27 February 2008)

A young boy goes to sleep on Christmas Eve, steady in his disbelief of Christmas and determined to prove it all a hoax this year. His vigil is interrupted though by the arrival outside his door of a massive steam driven locomotive, The Polar Express. Tentatively he boards it with the friendly but gruff conductor and finds himself in a carriage full of other children heading to the north pole. With the mystery of what awaits him at the back of his mind, the boy and his new friends get into a series of adventures on the rails.
This is a family film designed to be watched at Christmas in front of a warm fire with a family including young children. Some reviews have forgotten this and have made a big deal out of the weaknesses inherent in it. The fact that the animation was so cutting edge seemed to also suggest that perhaps these weaknesses were because the majority of work was put on the computers and not the writers but personally I do not believe this is the case. Lets be honest though, the plot is a simple one where a boy goes to the north pole to meet Santa (maybe), that is essentially it. On the way there are several train-based adventures and lessons learned.
It is quite fun though and I enjoyed the sense of wonder and adventure that it produced. OK I'm not going to watch it with a group of my peers on a Friday night but that is not the point. The simple story fills the running time really well with the journey structured around mini-adventures to good effect. The message is a little bit sentimental but again it comes with the territory I suppose. The animation is impressive though. I think the claims that real actors will be redundant within years is nonsense but then nobody really thinks this will happen  it is just a way to get publicity through headlines. What it does do though is shore up the wonder by producing some great sequences and shots that would not be possible without computer technology. The cast is mostly solid although this is the same as saying that Hanks is good since he does most of the voices but Gaye was pretty good as well.
Overall then an enjoyable little fantasy that delivers a sense of wonder across the story and animation. OK it is probably only going to work while on the home turf of Christmas but this is what it is for and I didn't have a problem with it working just as it proposes to work.