This site would be a lot more frequently updated if I were to write about movies… hmm, interesting thought. Since I am making movies of a kind, maybe I should demonstrate some kind of knowledge of the greater art of filmmaking. Or, at least, some critiquing skills.
I saw a couple movies today: one good, and one pretty abominable. Let’s start with the bad, because, let’s face it, it’s fun to criticize, and I don’t have nearly enough fun.
The Polar Express (2004)
This one airs every year for free on TV, and I’d heard tales of its .. unorthodox content; so, having 2 hours to kill, I decided to see what it was about. Of course, my opinon was still (dis)coloured from the time of its theatrical release: with all the attention to motion-capture, graphics, and to replicating the actor’s likenesses in CG, I thought they may be covering for something–like the lack of a basis for a legitimate movie. Still, I’ve seen a lot of Christmas specials, and I know, whatever the outcome, that they’re usually harboring good intentions at heart.
…Not exactly the case in Polar Express. Yes, there is a kernel and a message in its 1.5 hours, but it’s a bit forgotten in an agoraphobic, directionless thrill-ride; a vehicle for special effects, and little else, which concludes that fear is the only emotion worth exploring to its vulgarised, desensitized viewers. Yes, it’s unmitigated fear that makes a Christmas merry, so hold on to your holly ass, we’re going to get jolly!
The story: Tommy (that wasn’t his name, but I refuse to call him “Hero Boy“) is at an age where he’s realizing a few things… things that would preclude him from believing in Santa Claus. On Christmas Eve, he stays up listening for Santa’s bells, hoping against hope that his painstaking research and mental maturity have misinformed him. But finally–because virtually nothing is freakin’ happening except things looking pretty–sleep takes him.
He wakes up to an earthquake; no, rather, a train passing in front of his house. (It’s a good excuse for things to animate. OoOoOh.) Venturing out into a yard filled with particle effects, Tommy meets the conductor, voiced by Tom Hanks (who you may remember as the voice of Future Narrator Tommy, and later, as Tom the Stow-away Hobo Ghost, Santa Tom, and possibly others named Tom). Conductor Tom, whose train is bound for the North Pole, has stopped by because Tommy has fallen off the Santa wagon, and needs to be set straight. After some cryptic exchanges in a generally grating and stilted demeanour, Tommy boards the train at the last second–and truly sets out on his undigested-Christmas-cookie fever-dream.
The major plot motivations here are all accidents, and the characters exist only to provoke said accidents. The slightly-dimwitted Tommy drives most of the progression, getting his companions, Token Girl and Wrong-Side-of-the-Tracks Boy, into all kinds of spontaneous plot diarrhea. (OH NO, I DONE LOST GIRL’S TICKET! OH NO, I DONE GOT IT BACK, BUT NOW I DONE LOST GIRL!, etc.) Tommy also finds out their train is haunted, and as if that isn’t enough, they all get to visit the car of creepy misfit marionettes (I didn’t know 90% of kids asked for puppets only to STOP PLAYING with them). Adding to an already well-rounded cast of throw-away characters, they then meet a hirsute leprechaun and a morbidly-obese munchkin (the engineers, and the supposed comedy relief–thank god they killed that after 120 seconds).
Oh, and if this all sounds a bit disjointed, you should see the freaking movie.
In their spare time, the kids love to pull the emergency brake, resulting in utter chaos and ear-chafing scoldings from Conductor Tom; when that’s not possible, they enjoy the pants-pissing terror of barrelling down 90-degree inclines, or careening across a pond that has frozen over the railroad tracks. Never a dull moment–and yet, always.
In this 2-Act production, that’s all there is to Act 1. In Act 2, there’s misadventure after misadventure as the kids get progressively more lost in Christmas Town… or, uh, the “North Pole”, as they call it. This is a sad and disturbed place come straight from the mind of a Fallout fanatic: complete lack of a populace, overly-tidy present-processing facilities, and ’50s Christmas carols emanating from unmanned, skipping record-players, all suggesting some kind of nuclear, post-apocalyptic future. There are more perilous free-falls down the gift-chutes, ending at that funnel-shaft thing from the end of The Empire Strikes Back; then the three get sucked into a pneumatic tube, where we get lightspeed hallucinations in the image of 2001: A Space Odyssey. At one point, the kids stumble upon the Monitoring Room–kinda like the one we all imagined Santa to have, except that here, industrial screens play washed-out, blue-and-white images, repeating them over and over when there’s an alert of NAUGHTY behaviour; then the elves speak in logistical military language about how to deal with the target “child”. It’s all just a little too 1984 for me.
So it turns out the whole town is gathered in the square to see Santa appear, and here we get moshing reindeers, a near-Hindenburg drop, and other strange forms of Santa-zealotry. The elves are grotesque deformations of a “one face, one race” variety, and the severely subdued Santa (who has both the personality and bone structure of Snape from Harry Potter) was more apt to utter “Yes, indeed” than, oh, some silly thing like “HO HO HO!”. Really, when did pure joy, not tainted by the threat of Santa killing Dumbledore, become so wrong?
When Santa hands Tommy his bell, the first gift of Christmas, and he hears it ring (because now he believes in Santa again), it’s a terribly anti-climactic moment–but then again, the whole way here was one headlong, runaway train chase, with one narrowly-averted crash after another. Incidentally, that accurately describes how this movie managed to get through production.
I don’t really derive joy from slamming a kids’ Christmas movie, but really–Tom Hanks and Robert Zemeckis, among others, lent farrrrr too much credibility to this film, and deluded a lot of viewers by the sheer act of having their names attached to it. That only adds insult to injury, though. On the plus side, the mocap graphics will likely stand the test of time far better than other, more “un-photorealistic” CG, and the technical merits are unquestionable (especially after they’ve been carrying the movie for an hour and a half). There is an almost-poignant song number with the children, but it’s underexplored and over far too soon; a song and dance number, with some table-waiters juggling hot chocolate, actually exhibits some attention to an art form (choreography), and is the only real need for CG throughout. Still, I feel insulted after this movie. Shots are re-used throughout, taken at different angles or with EXCITING CAMERA MOTIONS, simply to show off the animators’ models and expertise further. You know what? I DON’T CARE what it looks like. Not the second or eighth time, either! Give me A Claymation Christmas any day over this tripe. I know it’s based on a book, but this adaptation feels like a mindless, soulless flight with the Christmas theme added almost as an afterthought. If I have to believe in Santa for the rest of my adult life in order to keep the Christmas spirit, or be subjected to death-defying trials of body, will, and attention span, then I say: “Bah Humbug” to you.
And if I EVER have to see Steven Tyler of Aerosmith as a rocking elf again, I’m having myself committed.
Stay tuned for my review of The Princess and the Frog, later today!
problemgamer
