A young kid on the verge of Christmas disbelief and with a strong inclination to see Santa hops aboard a magical locomotive which appears out of thin air right in front of his door step. Along with a cadre of his wide eyed peers, a punctual conductor, and a duplicitous hobo (the latter two plus three other characters are voiced by and resemble Tom Hanks) on the North Pole bound express, he undergoes a series of adventures that restore his faith in the season. Robert Zemeckis' The Polar Express is an adaptation of Chris Van Allsburg's classic Christmas children's story and an early experimentation with motion capture technology. The result is occasionally exciting (this probably would have been a fun one to see in 3D) and contains some good voice work by Hanks, but it is also a creepy, bloated interpretation which adds a bunch of schmaltzy Christmassy crap to a 1,000 word picture book (and a pretty unremarkable one at that, in my own humble opinion).
