Mostly, I just noticed this weekend that the usual glut of bad family movies had suddenly acquired a touch of festive sparkle. I did toy with writing about Santa With Muscles, but that would have contravened my rule about shooting fish in a barrel, as well as necessitating watching it.
The Polar Express is one of these films that I've only ever seen piecemeal, as something vaguely visually distracting whilst I was waiting for something more interesting to show up on TV. I knew, however, that it was based on a picture book by author Chris Van Allsburg, and I knew it used motion-capture animation to allow Tom Hanks to play several of the major roles, including the unnamed Hero Boy (luckily, he allowed Spy Kids' Daryl Sabara to take on voice acting duties for this one.) I knew we first met our hero one Christmas Eve when he was starting to have his doubts about Santa Claus and the magic of the festive season, and I knew it was about how he got invited aboard a mysterious train bound for the North Pole and the trip he took.
I also knew Mr. Beaupepys flat-out refused to watch it on grounds of excessive creepiness, and from the snatches I'd previously seen I was inclined to think he had a point. Still, part of the reason I'm writing this thing is to take a good hard look at popular prejudices, which means that every now and then I should probably put my own under the magnifying glass, too.
The good
The visual style is really, umm, distinctive? Faint praise, I know, but the backgrounds in particular occasionally display a genuine beauty, even if it is of the very loneliest variety, like that of a windswept moor or a ghost town. Sometimes the composition of a shot will look almost painterly, as with the glowing lights of the train as it ascends a spiral mountain. It is at those points, I think, that The Polar Express comes closest to finding a sense of genuine wonder. The rest of the time, well, the motion capture animation is really clever, I suppose?The thing I liked the most about the movie, though - well, admired, because I can't honestly say I felt a genuine warmth towards any aspect of it - was Hero Girl, a young African American girl who joins the hero boy on his journey and precipitates most of the action with her bravery and compassion. Her belief in the Christmas spirit is unquenchable, and I would have loved to have seen her as our main heroine. That's not how the book works, however; Hero Boy isn't sure he believes, and there's more rejoicing over one sinner who repents, etc, etc - it's unsurprising if vaguely depressing that (spoilers) he's the one selected for the honour of receiving the first Christmas gift from Santa.
The bad
Believe it or not, I don't enjoy eviscerating movies. I particularly don't enjoy eviscerating kids' films, and I most especially don't enjoy eviscerating the Christmassy ones. I find myself feeling obliged to pre-emptively defend myself by pointing out that I get up at 5am every Christmas morning to watch favourites like Olive the Other Reindeer, and that if I ever were to miss The Snowman or Muppet Christmas Carol I'd feel as though Christmas hadn't really happened at all.So... not a Scrooge, okay?
It's just that The Polar Express is so unrelentingly bloody bleak and chilly that I find myself wondering whether Zemeckis didn't do the majority of his work on it whilst channeling the childlike wonder and warm humanitarian soul of Christopher Nolan. Oh, and just so we're absolutely clear, 1) that was sarcasm and 2) this is my second attempt at writing a sentence featuring both those names because 3) the first one conjured up the sort of unpleasant images that I, unlike Zemeckis, wouldn't want to burn into your brain.
Let's deal with the animation first. Yes, the characters do undeniably look creepy. I don't think it's the visuals themselves so much as hyperrealistic motion animation married to artwork intended to resemble Allsburg's illustrations. We're deep into Uncanny Valley here, and it's worsened by the mental image of Tom Hanks underneath, wearing a blue suit covered with ping pong balls and pretending with all his might to be a small child experiencing wonders and horrors untold.
This actually wasn't my biggest problem with the film, though; no, that one's reserved for the narrative. I haven't managed to lay my hands on a copy of the original picture book and so I'm not sure who gets the blame for this one, but my God, a lot of dangerous stuff happens in this movie. Scarcely five minutes pass without our young heroes falling prey to some sort of unspeakable danger - this usually involves falling, either from a great height, at a great speed or, frequently, both. There's also the ghost hobo who generally provides a last-minute rescue but whose identity and motives are never entirely clear, and who himself apparently meets various terrible fates at various points during the 100-minute running time.
Under the circumstances, my usual pet peeve of an overly heavy-handed soundtrack hardly even registers. Yes, though, there is one, and yes, it does grate. Similarly annoying is the film's single named female character, and the relentless middle-classness of the whole affair; anybody not obviously at least comfortably off is treated either as a figure of pity (Lonely Boy) or of fun (the engineers). This isn't a terribly inclusive Christmas we're looking at, and nor, despite Hero Girl's best efforts, is it a particularly compassionate one. As far as I can tell, the only morals of the story seems to be that all the best stuff is reserved for those who believe unquestioningly, and that adulthood is a tragedy because it robs us of the capacity for unquestioning trust.
Yeah, if you dig beneath the surface there's some really worrying stuff going on here.
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