Warner Bros have finally joined the proverbial bandwagon and created their first big budget computer generated animation. A tale with a Christmas flavour, and boasting computer effects that are life like in presentation.

Supposedly based on the book, The Polar Express follows a young boy who has lost his faith in Christmas and Santa Claus. Perhaps he became disillusioned with Santa sponsoring the world’s favourite cola drink, or perhaps he just didn’t get the present he wanted.

In any case, his lack of faith is challenged when a train called The Polar Express arrives. It’s destination is the singular North Pole, and on the train are other children who are all travelling expectabtly to meet and greet Santa Claus himself. The train arrives and departs in mystical fashion, with the young boy on board, who’s about to take a journey he’s not soon likely to forget.

With the Sony managing the computer related wizardy, Robert Zemeckis directing and penning the script, and Tom Hanks play multiple voice over roles, the whole thing gels together well enough to keep the youngsters busy and to bring a feeling of festive fun. It’s a sort of children’s version of Scrooged in some senses, where the Christmas spirit has left the individual, and the journey transforms that disbelief into a commited and resounding faith.

The Polar Express does have a claustrohphobic feel, mainly because three thirds of the film takes place on a train, and no where. Sure the characters jump inside and outside of the train, but it feels more like a disaster movie at times and is suffocating as a result.

They’ve tried hard to keep the family entertained by throwing in musical numbers, and Tom Hanks is pretty good in multiple voice acting role, but for adults I think it may bore them as much as it did me. For the young ones, they will dreamily engaged by the film.

Brad Bird rightly stated that having the most realistic humans generated by a computer is a worthless exercise (paraphrasing) as it simply limits the imaginaton of what can be achieved. This is true of The Polar Express, where everything but the humans feel real.

There’s a glossy, unrealistic plastic feel to the human characters, that don’t offer the realism as seen in Final Fantasy Advent Children, or even Final Fantasy The Spirits Within. Since the director intended for the film to be as lifelike as possible, it fails in this regard and looks quite awful.

A film of this type, would have benefited greatly with real actors, actual children to engage the viewers far more than the computer generated mannequins on offer. This is a shame, as a lot of effort has gone into making the film exciting and interesting for the younger viewers, and often succeeds in entertaining them thoroughly.

The Incredibles, Bird’s own effort, is an example of intelligent and interesting usage of computer generated films. Shrek would be another example, all of which forgoe realism for fantasy. The Polar Express seems to fall short of expectations and their own goal to achieving an unmatched level of realism. It’s impressive overall, but is let down by this small, but important, element.

Verdict: Solid, safe entertainment for children, a bore for adults