Too dark to belong in the Christmas movie cannon.

Rating: 3/10 (1 February 2010)

I feel like Scrooge or the Grinch for giving a kids' Christmas movie such a bad review. But compared to the classics in the Christmas film "cannon" (like A Christmas Carol, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, A Christmas Story etc.), Polar Express just didn't stack up in my opinion. This puts me at a minority, since most people seem to enjoy it.
For one thing, I thought the animation in Polar Express was somewhat elementary in comparison to other CGI films, lacking the finer touches of Pixar or of Dreamworks or even of some of Zemeckis' other films (like Monster House or his version of A Christmas Carol). I guess I found the relatively poor quality of animation, of the characters' faces especially, distracting.
Another thing is that both the story and the physical setting of the plot were dark and kinda gloomy (literally and figuratively) for a kids' movie, especially for one about Christmas. Sure kids' movies can get dark as the characters encounter difficulties in the story, but there just didn't seem to be many bright or happy moments here to counterbalance. I wanted to experience more of the magic of the train and of the North Pole instead of getting bogged down in the foggy, eerie, and dark roof of the train or in the abandoned inner-workings of Santa's shop. There was plenty of opportunity to show us some neat Christmas excitement and I felt let down.
Finally, I didn't like the Oscar-nominated original song. It was too much like the storyline and setting and animation in that it lacked zest for the fundamental joy and exhilaration of Christmas.
Tom Hanks certainly did a great job doing so many diverse voices throughout. I'll bet he enjoyed doing something like this, something quite unique for him. But Hanks could not keep this film afloat all by himself (like he did in Cast Away, another Zemeckis film, one which I liked). Overall, I wanted and hoped for more than I got with this movie. Zemeckis has done better.