The Polar Express 2004

[4.8/10] The Polar Express is based on a thirty-page children’s book. I loved that book when I was a kid, but part of what I appreciated about is that it was a straightforward dose of imagination. It’s less a story than a chance to put yourself in the shoes of the protagonist, and picture yourself on a trip to the North Pole to meet Santa Claus himself. There’s very little conflict, very little in terms of identifiable characters, with most of the space filled in with wonder and atmosphere.

That’s a good thing in a children’s book. Mood and setting and pure fun should be the order of the day. But there was reason to be concerned about the attempt to translate the book to the silver screen. Would director Robert Zemeckis add in more conflict and story beats? Would he be able to replicate that infectious spirit from the source material? Would he be able to expand a short and simple story to cinematic length?

The answer to all three of these questions is “No, not really.” The movie version of The Polar Express adds more perfunctory, underdeveloped characters and overblown action sequence to fill out its ninety minute run time, loses the charm of the original in a tsunami of ugly and at times even disturbing CGI designs and animation, and finds little reason this needed to be a feature-length film rather than a thirty-minute special.

In addition to the original boy from the book, Zemeckis adds in a “spirited girl”, a “know-it-all boy” and “Billy” the boy who is lonely (read: poor). It’s not the worst idea to try to broaden the cast from the book to help make the story feel more lived-in and less centered on one single character. But none of these kids, including our protagonist, has a personality. Instead, they’re each just bland archetypes or walking jokes, that makes it hard to invest in any of their journeys here.

That might work better if everything in this movie didn’t look utterly hideous. I’m loathe to critique the quality of computer-generated images from fifteen years ago. But the truth is that Zemeckis chose to spearhead a motion capture effort at photorealism in 2004 regardless of whether the technology and results were ready for primetime or not. This movie has problems beyond its aesthetics, but it’s not hard to imagine some lovely, hand-drawn animation conveying the warmth and magic of the original book absent the glowing, animated corpse look that so pervades The Polar Express’s jump to the silver screen.

The children in particular look legitimately creepy. The elves seem more like escapees from a local freak show than whimsical beings. And while the backgrounds and physical objects veer less into the Uncanny Valley than the human figures do, there’s still an antiseptic quality to the whole presentation that robs the film of any visual splendor to help offset its filler-stuffed runtime.

In truth, the only time the movie really works is when it’s going for a vaguely horror vibe. There are times when The Polar Express aims to be a little scary, whether its our protagonist running into a mysterious man who seems to live on top of the train or a train car full of discarded marionettes, and it makes me wish that Zemeckis and company had attempted to use this budding technology and its unsettling, not-quite-there approximations of the human form and visage, for something meant to chill rather than warm the heart.

But heartwarming is what The Polar Express is built for, however shoddily or creepily. The throughline of the story is that the young boy at the center of the narrative has lost his belief in Santa Claus, and it takes this adventure to restore his faith in the big red sprite. That sense of dwindling belief, restored by an extraordinary experience, is one of the clearest connections between the film and the book and, not coincidentally, is one of the few potent elements of the production.

The film dramatizes our protagonist’s waning belief in Santa with magazine clippings and overheard conversations. That doubt is replaced by a renewed sense of wonder in what is really the only actual story or arc in The Polar Express, with a sleigh bell working as a metonym for the young boy’s ability to buy in to the spirit of the season.

And in one of the few touches made possible (or at least made easier) by the shift to CGI, Tom Hanks plays the boy’s father, the train conductor, a mysterious quasi-magical train hobo, and Santa himself. That not only contributes to the Peter Pan-esque “It was all a dream” sense of the whole thing, but suggests a deeper, maybe even subconscious understanding that the magic of the season comes from the hard work and love of one’s parents, that we can feel even if we can’t quite resolve our conflicting feelings in that tender time between childhood and adulthood.

The problem is that The Polar Express loses that thread in a wash of action-y nonsense. Left with a bare bones children’s story and ninety minutes of airtime to fill, Zemeckis doesn't choose to flesh our his characters or deepen the narrative stakes. Instead, we get a strange rube goldberg sequence of a flyaway ticket, a pair of forgettable Disney knockoff tunes, a runaway train escapade, and a Star Wars prequel-esque jaunt through Santa’s factory.

It’s in these moments that the film feels more like a tech demonstration. These outings have little or nothing to do with the characters or the story or even the general tone of the piece. They’re just a chance for Zemeckis and his team of designers and animators to show off. That might work better on a sheer spectacle level if this approach to animation hadn’t aged so quickly and so poorly. But what’s left a decade and a half later is a film that feels like it’s more enamored with its own rapidly-decaying special effects than in realizing the heart at the center of the thing it’s adapting.

Sometimes, working from a lightly-sketched bit of source material can be a godsend. It gives you space to explore and expand rather than having to be beholden to what you’re extrapolating from. But The Polar Express squanders that opportunity, replacing the warmth and light of the original book with dead eyes and hollow spectacle. It doesn't give kids a reason to believe in magic; it only gives them reason to want to watch a better realization of the spirit of the season, and maybe be afraid that freaky revivified Xmas mannequins will come to get them if they don’t believe hard enough. Get ‘em however you can, I guess.

My boys have been all about the book this season, and we actually went on a local railroad museum's "North Pole Express" with friends a few weeks ago, so it's no surprise they wanted to watch this on Christmas eve. It's... okay, maybe. The holiday magic element isn't lathered on too terribly thick, and it adds a few interesting new wrinkles to a theme that's otherwise been beaten to death by film and TV. The necessary additions to pad a thirty-two page book into a feature-length animated movie feel appropriate and prove to be a thematic match, even if they do lean more to the visually bombastic than to the warmly charming.

Tom Hanks is all over the place, lending his voice to six different characters (including Saint Nick himself) and that gives the film a certain bounce and happy authenticity that would've otherwise been lacking. The animation hasn't held up very well, though, especially in the children. A bit like Shrek in that way; it probably looked passable at the time, but now it's all terribly stiff and just a hair uncanny. On the few occasions we see the train itself, it looks great. Just like the misty painted cover of the book itself. Light and simple, it makes fine throwaway material for this time of year.