1.5 out of 5 stars

Somewhere along the line, Castle Rock Entertainment and Warner Bros. Pictures came up with what they thought was a great idea: cast Tom Hanks in an animated movie and have him voice every main character, hire Robert Zemeckis, his partner-in-crime from ‘Castaway’ and ‘Forrest Gump,’ to produce and direct it, and do the whole thing in CGI.

The movie would be a hit, they probably figured, no doubt about it. So they went out, found a children’s book, remade it into a movie and spent at least $150 million on the film.

The movie retells the story from the book of the same title about a boy who starts to lose faith in Santa Claus and Christmas. In order to help restore his faith, the boy is picked up by a train called the Polar Express, which is heading to the North Pole. It’s not tough to guess what happens thereafter, as this is a children’s tale. Nonetheless, the story is cute, warm and all that junk, making it a perfect story for the holidays.

To their credit, the studio execs that came up with the concept for ‘The Polar Express’ film probably do have a hit on their hands. Plenty of people will show up in droves to watch the movie, which is released nationwide today, because Tom Hanks has pull, the well-known book will be a big draw and almost all Christmas movies targeted at children tend to do moderately well, no matter what.

But that doesn’t mean it isn’t a pile of junk – which is especially depressing because of the film’s grossly high production cost.

The fact that producers spent such an exorbitant amount of money will almost certainly irk moviegoers. CGI, while indisputably beautiful, is, frankly, unneeded. It’s only really used for two reasons: 1) so Hanks could voice a whopping six characters, and 2) so the movie theater can have a roller coaster-feel in scenes where the train moves at a high downhill speed through imagined terrain. Hanks is, of course, wonderful, which audiences have come to expect by now, as his voice is only recognizable in two of his six characters. Still, neither of these reasons really justify the spending of $150 million on production costs, most of which can be assumed was spent on the CGI animation.

That’s a lot of money to force a movie to make up for in the box office, especially considering ‘Shrek 2’ cost at least half as much to make, and didn’t ride its success on the fact that it was a holiday film.

Kids under a certain age will almost certainly go head-over-heels while watching this film. Everyone else, though, will be unimpressed, regretting that they hadn’t made the choice to just read the book instead.

Published on November 9, 2004 at 12:00 pm