A poorly constructed plot with vague hints at a moral.

Rating: 1/10 (26 November 2005)

I would confidently call this the worst movie I have ever seen, but unfortunately, I have seen Manos: the Hands of Fate.
But in terms of badness to money spent to make the movie, this takes the cake. The movie starts out with a kid getting on a train by himself because some guy promised to take him to see Santa. That's a great lesson to teach kids. It's like a kidnapper's dream. But anyway, he gets on the train, and they take him to a place where an old guys has video of children all over the world sleeping. Sound suspicious to you? The movie also glorifies "Man". Yep, the man, as discussed in School of Rock. The conductor of the train is portrayed as a good guy, but when you look at him, he's really just an uptight authority figure who's constantly telling people what to do. The main character is taught that he should blindly follow what others, namely authority figures, tell him. He freaks out over the slightest bending of rules (such as his friend leaving her ticket at her seat when she gets up).
Additionally, this movie features a poorly constructed plot. The first hour or so consists of wildly UN-entertaining sequences of inaction, mostly to take up time until they get to the main part of the movie. These anti-climactic events are thrown in randomly, and really play no role in the bigger picture. Thrown in is a mysterious ghost/hobo, who, like mostly everything in the first hour, has nothing to do with anything.
The theme of the movie is believing. The metaphor used for this is hinted at in the opening lines, and later in the middle of the movie for a little bit, and at the very end. The rest of the movie is just filler. And completely boring filler for that matter.
Overall, these add up to one of the most annoying and UN-entertaining movies I've seen in a long time. The people I watched it with liked it, saying it was "cute". Cute is puppies in a field of flowers. This movie was an annoying excuse to show off some rather spectacular animation (I'll give them that). It's not that I have something against children's movies. There are many great ones out there, namely The Incredibles, Toy Story, The Lion King, and many more. This one however, does not rank up there with them.