"'Polar' Bare"
by Scott Mantz

"The Polar Express"
Tom Hanks, Nona Gaye
Directed by Robert Zemeckis

What did you say your name was? A lucky young boy meets the Big Guy in "The Polar Express"

Robert Zemeckis has been so successful as a writer, producer and director, it’s easy to forget that he’s also one of the most technologically innovative filmmakers in Hollywood history.  Sure, he solidified his commercial sensibilities with box office hits like 1984’s “Romancing the Stone” and 1985’s “Back to the Future,” but he practically changed the way movies were made with groundbreakers like 1988’s live action-animation hybrid “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?” and 1994’s CGI-blended Best Picture-winner, “Forrest Gump.”

Now Zemeckis climbs aboard “The Polar Express” for his biggest challenge yet.  In an effort to duplicate the oil painted imagery of Chris Van Allsburg’s lavishly illustrated children’s book, Zemeckis is gambling $170 million on an experimental filmmaking process that will have to grease the rails all the way through the holiday season in order for Warner Bros. to turn a profit.  And it will have to do so right in the middle of enormous family-friendly competition, as Disney/Pixar’s highly anticipated “The Incredibles” opens 5 days earlier than “The Polar Express,” and Paramount’s “The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie” opens 9 days later.

With that much at stake, I was really hoping my review would include something shamelessly quotable like, “All aboard for an instant Christmas classic!”  Sadly, it doesn’t, for while “The Polar Express” is certainly ambitious on a technological scale, it’s too dark and emotionally detached to convey the warm and fuzzy spirit of a timeless holiday fable.  Despite Zemeckis’ best efforts to film a modern-day “Wizard of Oz”-style epic, not even the presence of longtime collaborator Tom Hanks (“Forrest Gump,” “Cast Away”) can keep “The Polar Express” from derailing as an expensive disappointment.

When a young boy (Daryl Sabara) is jolted awake on Christmas Eve by a massive steam train that comes to a roaring stop right outside his front door, the conductor (Tom Hanks) informs him that the train is en route to the North Pole.  The boy climbs aboard and meets several excited kids (Nona Gaye, Eddie Deezen), but for some reason, he still can’t bring himself to believe in the magic of Santa Clause.  What starts off as an extraordinary ride turns into a journey of self-discovery, as the young boy learns that the wonder and excitement of Christmas lies truly in the heart of those who never stop believing.

Where the process of Performance Capture was used to create the character of Gollum for all three “Lord of the Rings” movies, “The Polar Express” has the distinction of being the first feature to be shot almost entirely using the format.  Here’s how it works; the actors wore special form-fitting bodysuits covered with special markers so that all of their movements could be “captured.”  These movements were then fed into computers, which built all-new images on top of (and around) the actors, giving the film a unique blend that falls somewhere between live action and computer animation.

The problem is that for all the detail that went into accurately depicting real human beings, the characters look just as cold, dead-eyed and awkward as they did in 2001’s computer-generated box office bomb “Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within.”  Which begs the question, why go through all that trouble when you can just use the real thing?  Whether or not it would have made the film more expensive is beside the point.  It’s one thing to focus on non-humans or humans with highly exaggerated features (like Fox’s “Ice Age” or any of the Disney/Pixar films), but “The Polar Express” proves that the technology still has a long way to go before computer-generated people look just as lively as their real-life counterparts.

Screenwriter William Broyles, Jr. (“Apollo 13,” “Cast Away”) adds several new characters and elements to Van Allsburg’s 29-page tale, but the results still fall short of justifying the film’s 1-hour-and-40-minute running time.  A film like “Shrek” fared better at turning a short story into a successful feature, but that was because the sharp, clever screenplay transcended its source material in so many ways.  Zemeckis throws in a few bells and whistles in the form of some exciting roller coaster rides and Alan Silvestri’s manipulative score, but even they feel more like filler material to stretch out the story.

Tom Hanks certainly earns his stellar paycheck riding “The Polar Express.”  Not only is he one of the film’s executive producers, but also provides motion capture for 5 roles (the young boy, the father, the hobo, the conductor and Santa Clause) while voicing 4 of them (“Spy Kids” star Daryl Sabara voices the young boy).  It’s a project that was obviously close to his and Zemeckis’ heart, but it’s just too bad that the sentiment of the story got lost in the technology.  Hopefully, Zemeckis will fare better on his next big experiment, and I’m sure he will.  After all, we are talking about one of the most successful filmmakers in Hollywood history.

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