The Polar Express -- 2004 -- G

I watched this one again the other day, and just like when I saw it in the theatre the first time, it was amazing film. The story is very, very simple and a bit fantastical.

A boy who doesn't believe in Santa Claus is whicked away one night on a magical train that will take him and a group of other kids to the North Pole. Along the way, they run into a variety of misadventures involving a ticket, the train, and a weird hobo, but visually, it's all a pleasure to watch unfold.

Animation was a perfect choice of venue for this one since trying to do a live action movie with what's in here would have been beyond expensive, and the special effects might have been cool, but not as cool as this one looked. The characters looked really good for computer animation as well. It used a performance capture technique that was supposed to be very new and unused before. Well, it worked remarkably well.

Given that this is essentially an animated Christmas movie, we have our set of songs to make it a musical, but the songs were well-written as well. The main song of the film is entitled "Believe" and it is still being played on the radio around Christmas time. Heard it very recently as a matter of fact.

There was one little plot device that I found a little off, and that was the know-it-all kid...yeah, these characters don't actually have names. IMDB identifies the lead as "hero boy." But this know-it-all kid served as a bit of comic relief on the train, and then seemed to follow our main three at the North Pole as they got into a fix. The problem here is that these three went all over the place, and there's no way he could have followed them exactly. He ends up in the gift bag, and how he got in there is anyone's guess, but he apparently failed to actually follow them as the plot implied. To make it weirder, he serves no purpose for being there, so it's a device that really didn't matter. He could have been left out, and this hiccup totally avoided.

Finally, if one thinks back over their original journey, I can't help but wonder if they had any problems going back. After all, a good portion of the track was at the bottom of a lake at one point and this lake, which was iced over, busted clean through meaning that this train essentially drove under water for a bit. Sure, movie's over, but still...

It was a great flick to watch, and though rated G, it was thoroughly enjoyable as well. I'm sure it'll be a Christmas classic as the years roll on and rightly so, because they really did a good job on it.