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Movie review: The Polar Express
Dec. 5th, 2004 02:34 pmNot bad, Hollywood, not bad. Even though I don't usually care for Tom Hanks, and generally believe that Hollywood will ruin any good book.
Chris Van Allsburg's book The Polar Express won the Caldecott Award in 1986. This is an award for illustrated children's books and it focuses almost entirely on the illustrations. They are fantastic work, and the film captures the actual feeling of those illustrations. In fact, many times during the action I wanted to make it stop so I could compare the image to one of the original pages.
Like most kids' picture books, the story line in the original is rather thin. In order to make a full length feature, the screenwriters had to embroider considerably, but I think they did a pretty seamless job of that. My only real objection was to the gratuitous "roller coaster" scenes with the train, which were obviously added to put extra thrills into the Imax version of the picture and should have been omitted. They did nothing for the story.
Repeated references to hearing sleigh bells, which has an almost mystical psychological meaning that is revealed only at the climax, reminded me of Clarence the angel in It's a Wonderful Life. But the angel in this story is a hobo with a hurdy-gurdy and a talent for appearing and disappearing like the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland.
It was magical. Knowing how it would turn out in the end did not keep me from holding my breath and even shedding a tear or two. The scene of elves hitching up the reindeer to Santa's sleigh was especially well-done in my opinion.
My advice? See it. It's not just for kids.
Rating:
Four and a half apples (would be five except for the silly roller coaster junk.)
Chris Van Allsburg's book The Polar Express won the Caldecott Award in 1986. This is an award for illustrated children's books and it focuses almost entirely on the illustrations. They are fantastic work, and the film captures the actual feeling of those illustrations. In fact, many times during the action I wanted to make it stop so I could compare the image to one of the original pages.
Like most kids' picture books, the story line in the original is rather thin. In order to make a full length feature, the screenwriters had to embroider considerably, but I think they did a pretty seamless job of that. My only real objection was to the gratuitous "roller coaster" scenes with the train, which were obviously added to put extra thrills into the Imax version of the picture and should have been omitted. They did nothing for the story.
Repeated references to hearing sleigh bells, which has an almost mystical psychological meaning that is revealed only at the climax, reminded me of Clarence the angel in It's a Wonderful Life. But the angel in this story is a hobo with a hurdy-gurdy and a talent for appearing and disappearing like the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland.
It was magical. Knowing how it would turn out in the end did not keep me from holding my breath and even shedding a tear or two. The scene of elves hitching up the reindeer to Santa's sleigh was especially well-done in my opinion.
My advice? See it. It's not just for kids.
Rating:
Four and a half apples (would be five except for the silly roller coaster junk.)
