The Polar Express 2-Disc Edition DVD Review
Warner Home Video Distributes Robert Zemeckis Film Stars Tom Hanks
Nov 3, 2009 Dominic von Riedemann
It should be one of the Golden Rules of Hollywood: never mess with a great actor's performance.
There's no question that Tom Hanks is a great actor: look no further than his back-to-back Oscar wins for 1994's Forrest Gump and 1993's Philadelphia. He also proved himself an excellent voice actor in Pixar's Toy Story series, something few Hollywood stars can do.
So it's borderline insane that director Robert Zemeckis buried 5 spectacular performances by Hanks under lifeless motion-capture animation for 2004's The Polar Express. Re-released by Warner Home Video in a special 2-disc special edition for Christmas, it's a great concept and performances undone by one asinine decision.
Robert Zemeckis Directs Tom Hanks in The Polar Express
The night before Christmas, a little boy (performance by Tom Hanks, voice by Daryl Sabara) is suffering an emotional crisis: he doubts the existence of Santa Claus. Suddenly, there's a noise and a bright light: a steam train has inexplicably pulled up to the curb in front of his house.
"Well, ya coming?" the train conductor (also Hanks) impatiently asks the little boy. "To the North Pole, of course. This is the Polar Express!"
Turning Chris Van Allsberg's Caldecott-winning children's book into a 90-minute movie meant that Zemeckis and co-writer William Broyles Jr. had to create a whole mess o' plot to fit in the film before showing our little boy arriving at the North Pole and meeting the Big C himself (Hanks yet again).
Being Zemeckis, that meant a lot of exciting sequences as the Polar Express rolls up and down mountains at top speed, skids across a frozen lake and confronts a pack of unimpressed caribou. Luckily, Zemeckis is a past master of pacing, interspersing visual spectacle with quiet character development. It doesn't hurt that Hanks delivers 5 stunning performances (he also plays a hobo and the little boy's dad), giving each character its own voice. He's aided by judicious amounts of reverb (Santa sounds like he's talking in a spring-loaded tank) but it's Hanks who brings these wildly different roles to individual life. It's a breathtaking performance.
The look of the film is gorgeous as well. Zemeckis' goal was to bring Van Allsberg's paintings to life and, when it comes to the non-living elements in the film, he succeeds admirably.
Unfortunately this movie comes off the tracks (sorry) due to Zemeckis' questionable decision to convert everything into motion-capture, the computerized child of rotoscoping. While it's laudable that Zemeckis wanted to make the entire film look like it came from a Van Allsberg painting, the motion-capture 'actors' look waxy and emotionless, the actors' performances lost under a computer-generated sheen.
The wooden toys in a Rankin/Bass production show more facial expression than these computer-generated mannequins. When one listens solely to the voice work, it's clear that filming The Polar Express in mo-cap was a waste of transcendent talent.
DVD Extras
Among the copious extras are the 'You Look Familiar: The Many Faces of Tom Hanks' and 'Ticket to Ride' featurettes, which take the viewer behind the scenes, showing how the filmmakers created the world of The Polar Express. 'Meet the Snow Angels' shows the lead actors and crew discussing their Christmas memories (the highlight in co-star Nona Gaye, daughter of legendary singer Marvin Gaye), while there are two featurettes about the song 'Believe,' performed over the end credits by Josh Groban.
There's also a deleted scene, featuring a musical performance by the late Michael Jeter as Polar Express crew Smokey and Steamer.
Click around for 5 "stocking stuffers": clips which show Hanks acting various scenes juxtaposed with the final sequence. It's a blunt reminder of how much of those great performances were lost in the transition to mo-cap.
The Final Analysis
The Polar Express could have been a great movie. If Zemeckis had filmed this in live-action plus CGI, then the beautiful nuances of the actors' performances (especially Hanks) would have remained intact. As it is, an exciting children's film is undone by waxy, emotionless animation from Zemeckis' computer-generated actors.
The Polar Express 2-Disc Special Edition gets a 6/10.
a scene from The Polar Express
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