Review of The Polar Express (2004) by Filipeneto — 24 Sep 2021

It was with some expectation that I decided to see this Christmas movie. I already had the perception that the film, despite being fresh and recent, quickly fell into a certain way of oblivion, with the television channels preferring other films during the Christmas season. Inspired by a book, which I have never read but heard about, the film addresses as a great theme people's disbelief, from a certain point on, in Santa Claus.

In the film, a child whose name we do not know is invited to take a night trip to the North Pole, aboard a magical steam train, to meet Santa Claus and watch the old man depart on his annual trip to distribute gifts to the children of the World. He, however, does not believe in Santa Claus. Based on these premises, the film tried to build a kind of fable about the beauty of the Santa Claus myth. This never really worked: in addition to having no logic, the film has a terribly abrupt start: in the opening five minutes, we get a glimpse of the boy's life as he pretends to sleep, and we board the train without further explanation. The journey is lukewarm and uninteresting, the other children are bland or irritating and there is a character, somewhat ghostly, whose reason for existing is never really explained, but who helps the protagonist when he needs it. The ending is a kind of Santa Claus Superstar, with a show of aerial acrobatics of the gnomes.

Although the film has a pitiful script and was notoriously the victim of radical cuts at the editing table, it's necessary to bow to Tom Hanks for an extraordinary vocal tour de force: the actor took full advantage of his vocal skills and gave voice to a handful of distinct characters throughout the film, with evident highlights for the train collector and Santa Claus. But in addition to all these voices, the actor also sang in several of the main songs of the soundtrack, which has its moments of quality, despite not being memorable, having a series of moments where it seems to copy the soundtrack of "Edward Scissorhands" and having a certain song, "Hot Chocolate", which I didn't like because of the extreme simplicity of the lyrics. Another aspect that deserves our positive appreciation is the extraordinary visual accuracy of the film, which makes the most of visual effects and CGI, providing us with elegant, colorful, vibrant and engaging animation.

That said, I fully understand why this film came and went as quickly as a comet, both in theaters and on television, and ended up in the wastebasket of cinema history: despite director Robert Zemeckis having made a strong bet on visual effects and in a good animation, no film can't be sustained without a good story to tell.