Polar Express: Pure magic

I saw Polar Express and I thought it was wonderful. Tom Hanks does a wonderful job and the animation is amazing. The story is good and actually has somewhat of a 'liberal' plot. I recommend it for everyone.

year olds.

The only 'scary' parts are when the train is acting like a roller coaster. It's actually quite fun and you feel like you are on a 'ride'. I would say take all the kids. The message is pretty simple and the symbolism isn't hard to get at all.

a story about the magic of getting presents?! blech

The kids actually get something more then presents and a simple gift is considered to be the best gift of all. It might be somewhat different than the book.

different characters!

Great performance, a younger kid probably wouldn't be able to tell it was all Hanks.

and role playing the various characters. I look forward to seeing whether this is my reaction. Thanks for your review.

Movie critics haven't been too kind though, which is a shame. I have recommended it to my son to take twin 2 year-olds. It's truly a visual experience, and I liked the story too. I'm not sure where the mainstream critics are calling it dark and creepy, but Roger Ebert really enjoyed it, and saw it twice (once in IMAX).

You're right about the liberal part, it did have a Wizard of OZ sort of ending, which is definitely a feely good thing:)

I was going to skip it. THanks for the review.

but something about the animation of Polar Express seems downright creepy to me. I'll probably catch it on cable as a result.

yourself. Believing in your sense of wonder and imagination.

There is only ONE gift in the book. And it's a jingle bell.

That is symbolic of internal magic. Which is the magic of life and imagination. When that is gone, when the bell -- the inner sense of wonder and imagination -- cannot be heard, what have we lost?

I've had college students read that book and write. And somehow they never write about presents.

I like to think I still have the magic.

I'd heard mixed reviews about this movie, mostly revolving around how "dark" and "creepy" the animation was. But I feel the bad reviews are mostly from people who aren't familiar with the Chris Van Allsburgh source material; ALL his stuff is "dark" and "creepy". I prefer to think of it as moody and beautiful, though, and I thought this movie captured that atmosphere perfectly.

What I loved best about this movie is that it took it's time telling its simple story while plying us with gloriously beautiful images in between action sequences. Animators used to strive to do this in all their movies (like the "April Shower" sequence in Bambi), but you almost never see this anymore in the escalating fight over kids' dwindling attention spans. This movie just used its gorgeous, mysterious imagery to keep the kids awestruck when it wasn't scaring them half to death with the intense action scenes. (And I don't know if I'd take really little children, say under three, to see this. There are some real scares and thrills.)

And I loved the story, too, simple as it was. It was the first Christmas movie I've seen in a while that didn't winkingly lampoon the commercialism of the holiday while being blatantly commercial in and of itself. This movie was all about the feeling and magic of Christmas, about appreciating the little things.

I suspect that when the DVD comes out next Christmas, it will end up on my Christmas movie shelf with "It's a Wonderful Life" and "A Christmas Story". That's how much I liked it.