Say Cheese

Rating: 2/10 (13 March 2006)

his is one film whose producers had a vision, a combination of spectacle and play. But their reach exceeded their grasp.
The animation is cheesy at best when characters of any sort are present. It almost works when they are not. The animators took the not new idea of converting the human form to an animated one and forced it to new lows (IMO). The faces are somewhat repellent. This contrasts with The Incredibles, for example, which had attractive, amusing, and interesting faces and figures.
The film tries hard but fails in its goal of entrancement. Hanks does a fine job as the voice of the conductor. It doesn't save the film however. It is an inconsistent mishmosh of events and imagery that lends the impression of being thrown together. The scenes involving the train's engineers, who appear in Disneyesque slapstick, seem almost to come from a different film.
This is not to say that random elements of the film don't work. There is one sequence where the film follows the path of a lost ticket through a series of unlikely events as it progresses back to the train. Although disjoint, it is interesting. Many of the train scenes would work well with my young locomophile (3 1/2), but otherwise there's not a lot here for him. Many of the film's scenes come across as more nightmarish than fantastic. This is why (IMO) the film is not suitable for young children. For example, the scene where the acrobatic waiters are jumping around and throwing hot chocolate around the train car seem manic rather than entertaining or fun. And, the scene where the conductor is making the engineer scream in order to communicate with the caribou can only be described as bizarre.
The film has a limited age range of appeal, perhaps 6 to 8 year olds who have been exposed to a lot of popular programming and therefore can tune out the nonsense and the junk from experience. Older kids would be bored and younger kids appalled (your mileage will vary of course). In any case, the 'nice' story (and it is) will bypass most.
In short, this is a nice story but a poor movie. There is certainly no Christmas classic here. But it's not so very bad that I would say avoid it. It is just not good enough to recommend.