Back to the North Pole

Movie Review: The Polar Express

Think back to when you were just a kid. You believed in Santa Claus, elves and the North Pole. Can you remember when you stopped believing? Was it all at once, or a gradual thing? For me, I can't really remember, but I miss that feeling. Life was so much easier back then and I was much more hopeful and was a real dreamer. That's how I felt when I watched The Polar Express.

The people look a little fake, but they are in digital animation form (even if helped along by performance capture technology and every character is played by Tom Hanks). It was a little longer than I expected, but it was a feel-good movie. I will say that in terms of the original book, it was a much shorter trip, indeed.

Now I think a lot of people don't like the movie so much since it is such a departure from the book (if I remember right, there are more characters on screen than in the book and I don't remember anything about the train derailing), but for a holiday movie trying to restore your faith in things you cannot see or touch, I think they did a really good job.

This is not the typical kid-movie fare, where the script is written as much for the adults as for the kids. But I think most adults will enjoy it for what it is - a fairy tale made for the big screen with action and drama. Overall, a fun ride. It really just put me more in the Christmas mood than I already was, but I don't ming paying $8 for that!

So the one thing that was most disconcerting about this movie was the music. Now I love Robert Zemeckis, but I think he did us a dis-service by hiring the composer from Back to the Future, Alan Silvestri. So the whole movie sounded like Back to the Ghost of Christmas Past.