The true meaning of Christmas is in your heart

Rating: 8/10 (19 April 2008)

I read a review by another IMDb user who compared the look of the film to illustrations in old children's books, the ones that, for certain generations, bring back warm and much- cherished memories, and while The Polar Express didn't exactly knock my socks off like I expected it would, this is exactly what it looks like, and that kind of aesthetic appeal can go a long way.
The story involves an urgent Christmas time emergency. A young boy lies quietly in his bed on Christmas Eve, as the story begins, and pores over doubts in his mind about the existence of Santa Claus. Enter The Polar Express, a magical train designed for just such an emergency. The conductor, in the film's defining moment, calmly urges the astonished boy, "I think you should get on the train."
There are definite roller coaster moments which, for all of the movie's thematic cleverness, remind us periodically that this is meant to be a good ride, thrilling us with the stomach- turning train travel as much as with the brilliant animation and entirely new form of acting.
This new kind of acting and animation is done through something that I believe is called performance capture, where the actors really act out the scenes that they are in, and using a gigantic number of sensors placed over the actor's face and body, the performance is then entered into the computer, and Tom Hanks can be turned into a whole host of characters in the same movie. I believe he plays five parts in this movie.
What I love about the movie is that it doesn't give us a sugary confection when we get to the North Pole. Santa is not jolly old St. Nick here, he's a businessman with a lot of employees. Tiny employees, but also not cute little elves either. Even the reindeer look like real animals, that grunt and snort and, gasp, may even have bodily functions!
There were some points where I felt that the character of the conductor was a little too abrasive, even mean. I appreciate that the movie doesn't shoot for your traditional Christmas movie, opting instead to add some excitement and even be a little scary, but at some times the effort to do this became a little transparent and we get something where the conductor just comes off as a jerk.
Then again, I should mention that it is ironically because of things like this that the movie is so watchable, and re-watchable. I've heard some people worry about what this new method of capturing performances will mean in the future (I know that some people are, for some reason, worried that actors will some day literally be able to "phone-in" their performances), although that doesn't exactly strike me as a valid concern. It seems like an addition to the art, rather than a corruption. Either way, it's a pretty exciting ride!