The Polar Express (2004, PG)

This computer animated family features is based on the 1989 book by Chris Van Allsubrg.  While the CG is not nearly as impressive as Beowulf (which had freakin' awesome animation!), I must admit that it is pretty visually similar to the art of the original book.  The story is about a boy whose belief in Santa Claus is waning and a train to the North Pole pulls up in front of his house to take him and some other children to see Santa.  Maybe it would be more accurate to say that the movie is inspired by the book rather than based on it, because the book was like 20 pages and the movie was an hour an a half, so you know they padded it significantly.  They definitely added more adventure to the movie compared to the simple wonderment of the book.  Kind of interesting is that Tom Hanks (Big, Toy Story) voiced almost every adult male character in the film including the main character's (Hero Boy) adult narration, the train conductor (who probably has the most lines in the movie) and Santa Claus.  Eddie Deezen voiced Know-It-All Boy (I love the names of these characters: they didn't introduce themselves to each other in the story, so we have only their characteristics to go off of) but you might recognize the actor more from his role as Mandark from Dexter's Laboratory.  Man, that's a great cartoon voice.  Also the singer in the elf band looks remarkably like Stephen Tyler from the band Aerosmith and is in fact voiced by him.  It doesn't focus on the religious significance of Christmas, but on the presents (they're kids, after all) and on the family/love atmosphere.


While it took me a little while to get into the animation style, I really did like Tom Hank's characters.  I thought it was cool that the characters didn't call each other by name, because they didn't need to.  Some of the characters' actions didn't really make sense, but at one part in particular I thought that Hero Boy was acting very much the way a kid about his age would.  I thought the movie felt a lot like the first Harry Potter movie.  They get on the Polar/Hogwarts Express to go to their magical town.  It's got a few kids who band together to get through any dangers they come across.  One's particularly smart, one's particularly brave, one is impoverished and downtrodden but still a pretty good guy.  Again, I had a slow warm-up to the story, but once it got going I found myself really liking the magic and adventure more than I usually do in family movies.  Each of the characters grew as a person from this trip, and I like that a lot too.  If you liked the early Harry Potter movies (more than the later ones, which I also quite enjoyed), then I'm pretty sure you'll love this movie.  For me this movie is 4.5 stars.