366 Weird Movies may earn commissions from purchases made through product links.
DIRECTED BY: Robert Zemeckis
FEATURING: Tom Hanks, Nona Gaye, Eddie Deezen, Michael Jeter, Peter Scolari, Daryl Sabara
PLOT: A boy on the verge of abandoning his belief in Santa Claus is visited by a magical train that whisks him away to the North Pole, but the journey is filled with perilous diversions.
COMMENTS: There are two characteristics define Robert Zemeckis’ career: an eagerness to push the boundaries of visual effects technology, and an affection for frenetic, breakneck action. Sometimes the pendulum swings more in one direction than the other, but every now and then a Who Framed Roger Rabbit comes along to provide a healthy dose of both. So on the one hand, it is utterly unsurprising that Zemeckis would be captivated by the boundless potential of motion-capture CGI animation to deliver the kind of non-stop, eye-popping visuals that have always been impossible to realize in live action. On the other hand, it’s completely baffling that the property with which he would christen this new era would be the Caldecott award-winning children’s classic “The Polar Express.”
In fairness, it’s not a mystery that someone would come along to take a stab at turning this small book into a big motion picture. After all, Chris Van Allsburg draws cinematically. His page-wide illustrations capture action and emotion in an artistic splurge, summing up minutes of action and dialogue in single images, like oil pastel versions of Cindy Sherman photos. Building out from those lush Van Allsburg drawings probably felt instinctive, far more than other children’s book adaptations that expanded waaaaay beyond their source material, often to their detriment. There’s something very sweaty about the way absolutely nothing goes right for our Hero children, ladling on complications to make everything so much more EXCITING; but that’s not even the film’s greatest drawback. Rather, the problems arise when Zemeckis deploys his fantastic tech, which he has so often done in service of his story: shoehorning Forrest Gump into history, for example, or placing viewers in an impossible perch above Philippe Petit in The Walk. Here, though, the story is buried in spectacle, and repeated efforts to pad out the characters and give them more heft only make the spectacle push back harder. In The Polar Express, CGI beats Van Allsburg’s book into submission.
The movie wants to bedazzle you into a state of exhaustion. A raucous dance number in which flat-faced acrobats ricochet off the ceiling while singing the virtues of hot chocolate is aimed more at demonstrating the physics-defying capabilities of the technology than actually enchanting the children on the train. It’s immediately followed by the extended journey of a wayward train ticket, which takes a rollicking tour outside of the locomotive, floating through a pack of snarling wolves, flitting through a snowy forest, nearly becoming dinner for a flock of newly hatched eagles, before finally returning to the train compartment, all in an elaborate one-take that is visually impressive but emotionally vacant. The Polar Express is not so much a movie as it is a pitch reel. And Zemeckis is so determined to show off the things he can do with his new toy that he seems utterly oblivious to the tone-deaf situations grafted onto this VFX showcase, like the sight of a young African American girl being threatened with removal from the train by an old white man or a poor child being shunted to the caboose. It gives the impression that someone isn’t minding the store.
Much of what makes The Polar Express so strange to watch is the “uncanny valley” particular to performance capture. Criticism usually centers on the eyes, and especially on their inability to sit comfortably inside the skull. This is definitely true here, but let’s not overlook the many other ways these characters look bizarre, like their weirdly shaped hands or their faces that are completely blank until they suddenly snap into action. In particular, The Hero Girl (the actual credited name for Gaye’s character, suggesting the script went directly to the mocap stage without a second draft) has a head that sits unnaturally atop her undersized body like a bobblehead doll with a broken spring. They all just look so strange, in a way that would be salutatory if that were anywhere near the movie’s goal.
At some point, Zemeckis, screenwriter William Broyles, his team of adults playing children (Hanks alone plays seven different characters), and a warehouse full of digital artists must have started throwing random things into the mix in a desperate attempt to make something interesting happen. An elf yelling “meshugganah!” Cameras positioned inside mirrors, ice puddles, and book pages! Steven Tyler! And so, so many zoom-ins and zoom-outs across vast landscapes! The Polar Express is a noisy picture.
I am reliably informed that, in some circles, The Polar Express is considered a holiday classic. It’s certainly true that we look back on the entertainment we grew up with through the haze of nostalgia, and I would never want to step on anyone’s cherished memories of youth. So it is in the spirit of the holiday that I must declare: these people are wrong. The Polar Express is a cluttered, discombobulated, thirsty, and sometimes even offensive mess. If you’re ever bemoaning the glut of seasonally themed entertainment, just remember that every show added to the marketplace is one more thing you could watch instead of this. Merry Christmas.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
Polar Express (BD)
- Blu-ray
- Blue BD Case
- Dolby Surround 2.0 – English
List Price :
Offer: 9.99
Go to Amazon
(This movie was nominated for review by Parmesan74(letterboxd). Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)
Thank you so much for trashing this atrocious movie. I can’t begin to describe how much I loathe Zemeckis’s whole oeuvre and what it represents in moviemaking history.
Look, do I think this movie is flawed as hell, yes. Do I still love this movie, yes. I just love the atmosphere of the film, really does put you in both the warm and cold of Christmas.