Movie Review: The Polar Express (2005)

By Nell Minow

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What Parents Should Know
Parents need to know that the movie may be too intense and frightening for the youngest children. There are roller-coaster-y action sequences with some close calls, but no one is injured, and there is one scene with marionettes that could scare little kids. The "ghost" Hobo in the story shatters into pieces at one point. Also, the center of the story rests on a kid who is doubting whether or not there is a Santa. (According to the movie, yessiree.)

Families can talk about what they believe about Santa, and also about the Lonely Boy and what they think his real gift was. Families can also talk about each of the lessons punched into the tickets given to the children. Why was each of those lessons the right one for that child? They can talk about the difference between that which can be proven and that which must be believed without proof. When the conductor says, "Sometimes the most real things in the world are the things we can't see," what is he talking about? What is a "crucial year?" Why can't some people hear the bell? Who is the hobo and why is he there?

A boy who is beginning to question Santa lies awake on Christmas Eve afraid he won't hear anything. He hears a sound and runs outside to see an enormous locomotive pull up in front of his house; the conductor invites him to board. The train is bound for the North Pole and our unnamed hero/narrator will have many adventures and find the answer to his questions before he wakes up in his own bed on Christmas morning.

Director Robert Zemeckis has done a fairly good job of maintaining the integrity of the brief story as it is expanded to feature length. The complications of the journey are well-paced and consistent with the story's themes, though the know-it-all character becomes grating very quickly. It is less successful after the arrival at the North Pole, when the expansion starts to feel like filler, particularly when a nice selection of timeless Christmas standards on the soundtrack gives way to a lackluster rock song that brings the story to a standstill for no discernable reason.

The animators have done their best to preserve the look of Chris Van Allsburg's lovely illustrations. The result is attractive, if coarser and less graceful. There are moments of great beauty, especially the vertiginous ride as we watch a golden train ticket carried away by an eagle. And there are wonderfully imaginative images, dancing waiters pouring hot chocolate from silver pots with triple-spouts, Santa's huge workshops with viewing screens for naughty-nice monitoring and pneumatic tubes for transporting toys, and sometimes people.