DVDizzy Forum

Papa Bear wrote:I did not see anyother posts on "The Polar Express" so I thought I would start one I saw an early showing of this film yesterday on our local Imax screen and it was shown in 3-D. The film itself was awesome, the story was great easy to follow and kept you involved with the charecters. The animatimation is great. At times I forgot that the charecters on the screen were animated the background shots were totally sweet. And seeing it all in 3-D just enhanced the whole experience so much more. I would reccomend this film to everyone it is a great film to see with family or close friends to share this wonderful holiday season together. And if any of you have an Imax screen within a reasonable distance to you I would suggest that you see this in the Imax with the 3-D It was great!! I hate to say this on this forum but I evan enjoyed this film more than the Incredibles, Which I also enjoyed a great deal. But this film has that magic we all have come to know and love from Disney, so it is good to see that other film companies can spark the magic fire within us all.

Manohla Dargis of The New York Times wrote: Based on the 32-page children's book by Chris Van Allsburg, the new animated feature "The Polar Express" has already received attention for the advanced technology employed to make the film and the heart-skipping amount of money reportedly spent to transpose the story from page to screen. I suspect that most moviegoers care more about stories and characters than how much money it took for a digitally rendered strand of hair to flutter persuasively in the wind. Nor will they care that to make "Polar Express" Tom Hanks wore a little cap that transmitted a record of his movements to a computer, creating templates for five different animated characters.

It's likely, I imagine, that most moviegoers will be more concerned by the eerie listlessness of those characters' faces and the grim vision of Santa Claus's North Pole compound, with interiors that look like a munitions factory and facades that seem conceived along the same oppressive lines as Coketown, the red-brick town of "machinery and tall chimneys" in Dickens's "Hard Times." Tots surely won't recognize that Santa's big entrance in front of the throngs of frenzied elves and awe-struck children directly evokes, however unconsciously, one of Hitler's Nuremberg rally entrances in Leni Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will." But their parents may marvel that when Santa's big red sack of toys is hoisted from factory floor to sleigh it resembles nothing so much as an airborne scrotum.

Directed by Robert Zemeckis, who wrote the film with William Broyles Jr., "The Polar Express" is a grave and disappointing failure, as much of imagination as of technology. Turning a book that takes a few minutes to read into a feature-length film presented a significant hurdle that the filmmakers were not able to clear. The story seems simple enough: a nameless young boy neither fully believes nor disbelieves in Santa, but doubt nags at him so hard that he dreams up a train, the Polar Express, which transports him to the North Pole. Essentially Mr. Van Allsburg's story is about faith, not in Jesus, but in the fat man in the red suit who pops around each year on Jesus' birthday. As with many children's stories, it's also about the power of the imagination.

Manohla Dargis wrote:But their parents may marvel that when Santa's big red sack of toys is hoisted from factory floor to sleigh it resembles nothing so much as an airborne scrotum.

awallaceunc wrote: (and there's WAY too much Tom Hanks... what's the point in using him for almost every character?? What do they achieve?)