filkertom | The Polar Express

So, Hal and I saw The Polar Express yesterday.

I didn't dislike it. I even liked it. But, I must say that the best word for it is "uneven".

Express is, of course, the new Robert Zemekis film starring Tom Hanks. It reportedly cost upwards of $270 million to make and market, and it looks as if it's not gonna get that back until its release on DVD. That would be a shame, but understandable. I feel for Zemekis' ambition, but I'm not sure the route he chose was the best.

First, I could get into a highly technical discussion of the computer-generated animation, because you can't just talk about "the CG animation". There's facial animation, full-body motion capture, and prop/set animation. And within those categories there are divisions, and levels of success and failure. Short form: Uneven. More successful with the adults, particularly with the Conductor and the Hobo. Fair-to-good with the kids. Downright freakish with the elves.

But, honestly, it would've worked just as well, perhaps better, with real people.

The story? Well, the original book was, what, twenty-nine pages? The writers did better with this than Ron Howard's team did for The Grinch. (Granted, it was almost impossible to do worse.) It boils down to a kid who doesn't believe in Santa (although he sure seems to, which bugged me a lot at odd moments) being whisked away by a magic train to the North Pole on Christmas Eve.

Now, none of the kids in this film have names, except Billy, a depressed child who keeps saying "Christmas just doesn't work out for me". I wanted one of the other kids to grab him by the shoulders and shake him, yelling, "YOU'RE ON A MAGIC TRAIN TO THE NORTH POLE! ON CHRISTMAS EVE! I'D SAY THIS ONE'S WORKING OUT, OKAY?"

The protagonist who doesn't believe is likable enough; so is his other friend, a girl who suffers from several debilitating CG design conditions known variously as Badly Modelled Skull, Awkward Overexaggeration of Teeth, and Inconsistent Texture Mapping. At a few angles she looks spot-on perfect, but at most others she looks... well, weird. Oh, and Mandark from Dexter's Laboratory is one of the kids -- at least, he's a know-it-all with bad glasses, an unbearable voice, and an in-your-face greedy annoyance that made me want to feed him to the nearest shark available.

The "hook" (as if you need a hook when you're whisked away by a magic etc.) is that our hero can't hear Santa's sleigh bells ringing because he doesn't believe. The build-up in the movie works and all, but it's very manipulative -- the kid obviously does believe. That part isn't made any better by him saying in voice-over that he can't see Santa at first, when everybody watching the movie from his point of view can see Santa. Perhaps that's intended to get the kids in the audience to point and say, "He's right there!" as they might at a children's play when one character is hiding and another simply cannot find him.

Understand something, and it's not even necessarily a fault with the movie, because this might be necessary for a target audience this young: The last film I saw that was this baldly manipulative was... Cast Away, a Robert Zemekis film starring Tom Hanks. Hmmm.

I could go on for awhile about the film's faults. But I don't think I will, because many of them are small and technical, having to do with how realistic the animation is. And, if you can get past that, there is indeed a great lot of good stuff in there. The engineer and his assistant are excellently-drawn characters, and they hardly have any dialogue between 'em. A lot of the hazards of travel (which is really one of the only ways to pad a film like this) are roller-coaster-ride scary fun, in one case literally. The design for the exteriors ranges from very good (the roller-coaster mountains and the North Pole itself) to fantastic (the spiral mountain). The script tends to show you things, rather than explain them, and that's always a good thing. There's even a gentle little song in the middle, and I started off going "... A song?" and ending with, "Awww, that was kinda sweet". Oh, and, Hanks is of course terrific.

I do not believe the movie is too scary for young kids, even though it's got a few exciting moments and about two too many instances where it looks as if a kid is going to blamed for something bad when he/she was trying to do the right thing. And it's not as watchable for its own sake as, say, The Nightmare Before Christmas. But it is a good holiday movie. If you can get past its blemishes, there's a pretty nice present waiting for you. 7 out of 10.