25 Days: THE POLAR EXPRESS

Sentimentality is part of a grand tradition in Christmas movies, for better or worse (but as we've shown and will show, that often gives way to "anti-sentimentality"), but there's at least a couple movies that have been known to take even that much too far... and people seem to like it:

THE POLAR EXPRESS    (FANTASY/ANIMATED, 2004)
Directed by Robert Zemeckis
Starring Tom Hanks, Nona Gaye, Peter Scolari, Eddie Deezen, Leslie Zemeckis, Michael Jeter, Daryl Sabara (voice only), Jimmy Bennett (voice only)
G
Naughty or Nice?: Generally Nice
Religious or Secular?: Secular
Cynical or Sentimental?: Extremely Sentimental
Holiday Relations: Christmas is Integral to the Plot
OVERALL:  2 out of 4

THE POLAR EXPRESS turned out to be a really significant landmark in filmmaking, although perhaps not in the positive sense that its makers had hoped for.  It was through THE POLAR EXPRESS that the limitations of hyper-realistic computer animation became apparent and the term "uncanny valley," originally coined in the 1970s in the robotics field, came into regular usage for film.  The term, uncanny valley, refers to the area between artificial humanity that is highly stylized (i.e. anthropomorphized non-human characters, two-dimensional images) and what is actually "human."  That area in between, the uncanny valley, is where something is "almost human," something that looks as human as possible without actually being human, and the human emotional response is negative, like looking at a dead body moving around.  This is THE POLAR EXPRESS' great legacy to date, as it is the textbook example of this unflattering phenomenon, and yet, while I do not like the film, it isn't so much for the uncanny valley, although it doesn't help.
Adapting the 32 page-long, illustration-heavy children's book of the same name by Chris Van Allsburg, the screenplay by director Robert Zemeckis and William Broyles, Jr. (the latter having written Zemeckis' previous film, CAST AWAY) follows an unnamed child (identified as "Hero Boy" in the credits; performance by Tom Hanks, voiced by Daryl Sabara) who may have reached the extent of his belief in Santa Claus one unspecified 1950s Christmas Eve when a steam locomotive roars to a stop outside his house.  Hosted by a cantankerous conductor (performance & voice by Hanks), the train is The Polar Express, a magic train tasked with rounding up a specific selection of deserving and/or "at risk" children for a trip to the North Pole on Christmas Eve, to send Santa (performance & voice by Hanks, again) off and for one to receive the "First Gift of Christmas."  Along the way, the lead boy befriends a faithful girl (performance & voice by Nona Gaye) for whom the words "Are you sure?" are like "Klaatu Barada Nikto" to Gort, an impoverished and hopelessly depressed wanker-boy named Billy (performance by Peter Scolari, voice by Jimmy Bennett), and a loud-mouthed know-it-all (performance & voice by Eddie Deezen), just in case this movie's disdain for logic isn't clear enough already.  To had another character to Hanks' collection, there's also a hobo ghost, "The King of the North Pole," who lives on the train and shows up occasionally to save the main character's ass then act creepy.
Like the book, the film intends to get by mostly on its visuals, but whenever those visuals are the characters, the effect is negative.  When the film distracts itself almost entirely from the meager plot is when the film is most entertaining, with some spectacular "fly-through" shots that must be amazing in 3D screenings, such as a loose ticket carried away by the wind and then passed along by animals and elements, and the "subjective roller-coaster" shots from the front view of speeding vehicles.
The fact is though, that for many audiences, especially young families and/or Christmas die-hards, THE POLAR EXPRESS just may be the ideal Christmas movie.  It's family-friendly, and any single ounce of cynicism is quickly trounced under heaping disapproval.  It is one of the schmaltziest major Christmas movies ever made.  Santa is real, the poor boy gets his Christmas present (and friends!), and the doubter learns to believe again... for the rest of his life!
For just about anyone who's ever had anything short of a perfect holiday (i.e. gone Christmas shopping) though, it is a little hard to stomach.  I mean, besides the characters looking creepy, and frequently acting creepy, it's almost insultingly sentimental, with out any respect for intelligence.  I know it's a "children's movie," but that hardly makes a good excuse for a movie that brazenly ridicules logic and critical thought, primarily embodied in the so-called "Know-It-All Kid," who's about as close to an antagonist as the film gets.  Even if that's honestly not a problem for you, for some reason, there's a creepy train hobo who speaks in macabre riddles, and the elves all speak with East Coast accents and look like what any other movie might call goblins.  It's just kind of a yucky movie.
But if you love it, don't let me ruin it for you; just please don't assume me a Grinch for disliking it.  Assume me a Grinch for not liking Christmas.