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The Polar ExpressAt just 35 pages, Chris Van Allsburg's illustrated storybook 'The Polar Express' seems unlikely inspiration for a Hollywood feature film, let alone this state-of-the-art animated movie that reputedly ran up a $170 million budget. Directed by Robert Zemeckis - one of Hollywood's pioneers of new technology, as his work on Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Death Becomes Her proves - this tale of a young boy who's whisked off on a magical train to meet Santa Claus becomes a showcase for the next generation of motion capture technology. The result is a technical triumph, but a rather dark Christmas movie. The first ever feature to be shot using the new "performance capture" system, The Polar Express really is a feat of 21st century cinema. The animation has a photorealistic quality that allows the live performers (chiefly Tom Hanks, who takes several roles) to sing, dance and act against beautiful snowy backdrops. It paves the way for some stunning moments, not least of all a sequence that would have been near impossible to render in live action in which a ticket is blown out of the train by a gust of wind, flies across mountains and valleys, gets picked up by wolves and eagles before seamlessly floating back into the racing train carriage it escaped from. It's jaw-dropping stuff that, when combined with Alan Silvestri's catchy Christmas song numbers, turns this story into an enjoyable Christmas outing.
When it comes to the characters themselves, though, the technology is not quite as seamless. Lips occasionally move out of time with dialogue, faces seem soulless and movements are jerky. Ironically, such not-quite-perfect animation gives this hyper-real outing a certain unreality, reminding us just how wide the gap between digital animation and real life remains. It also gives the proceedings a slightly spooky feel, something exaggerated by the screenplay's constant stream of scares. No sedate Yuletide trip, The Polar Express is instead a frequently scary journey chock full of ambivalent characters (including a ghostly hobo who's not to be found in the original book) and a series of run-away-train moments that make the most of the film's simultaneous (Stateside) release in IMAX format. The slightly sinister tone prevails at the North Pole. Santa proves to be a dour old man who presides over a mechanised kingdom of conveyor belts and surveillance systems that spy (Big Brother-like) on the world's children. He's helped by millions of red-suited elves who gather in the city's main square to hail him on Christmas Eve in a scene which might strike older members of the audience as having more in common with Triumph Of The Will rather than The Santa Clause. It's moments like these that make one wonder if the adult filmmakers were so obsessed with their technological toys that they forgot who they were supposed to be making the movie for. It's also enough to prevent this entertaining, groundbreaking film from becoming a real Christmas cracker.
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