The Critics Speak

The Polar Express

Critic: Steph Lewis
On a scale of 0 to Awesome, I rate this: Good!
Released: November 10, 2004
Director: Robert Zemeckis
MPAA RATING: G

This movie is a creation of the popular children's book The Polar Express, by Chris Van Allsburg. Basically, a young boy doubts the existence of Santa and is scooped up onto the Polar Express to prove that "seeing is believing." The movie speaks of a child's desire for Santa to be real, but even more deeply shows the theme of humans longing for something bigger out there than just normal life. Starring Tom Hanks as, well, pretty much every adult male character, The Polar Express is a nice little diddy to definitely see once, and maybe yearly after that if you decide you like it. I probably won't, but it's still a nice little package of a movie.

I saw this one at the IMAX theater in Minnesota in 3-D. It's definitely the coolest thing I've ever seen in 3-D. It was awesome to go up and down the roller coaster train tracks and slide down chutes and be on top of a train and all that kind of stuff right along with the characters. Having first seen this in 3-D, I think it would be lacking in 2-D because the live action is what captured me. The animation is extremely real...to the point that I wondered why they didn't just use the real actors. These animations that were so close to real, but not, came off as a little creepy to me. I guess that I want movies to either have real characters (played by real people) or to be animated in a creative way that is not of this world. This movie was kind of a strange place in between and that was odd for me.