Quick 'N Dirty Movie Review: The Polar Express

Snuck in and saw this one this afternoon after getting off work, and it's pretty good. The visuals are amazingly well done - I don't know if they had the chance to tweak the animation seen in the trailer, which looked considerably less convincing, or whether it all looks better in its own context, but as far as visual style, the movie works and works very well. So well that I completely gave up on all the visual trickery (such as the fact that Tom Hanks, through texture and movement mapping technology, plays pretty much every major character, from the unnamed hero to the conductor to the hobo to Santa himself) and just was able to enjoy the story on its own merits. The story has a few overdone contrivances (the flight of the lost ticket, while amazingly well done on a visual level, is also astoundingly over-the-top) and annoyances (the know-it-all boy, who's supposed to be annoying, is somehow moreso - no doubt because he's played by, of all people, Eddie Deezen), but as a charming holiday fantasy, it works.

(Review over, rant ahead.)

And it works even BETTER if you haven't seen the darn trailer which pretty much gives away everything. Man, I'm getting tired of Zemekis' trailers surrendering the entire plot of the film before you even see it. (SPOILER ALERT! DO NOT READ FURTHER UNTIL YOU'VE SEEN THE FILM!) From that trailer, I was able to successfully deduce that not only do they get to the North Pole A-OK, but that they do meet Santa Claus, and that Santa gives the hero a bell, and that the kid finds the bell in his presents, to assure him that the adventure was real. All of this, THE ENTIRE ENDING of the story, given away before it had been seen by anyone. And this ain't the first time this has happened with a Zemekis film trailer - anyone remember the Cast Away trailer, which gave away the fact that he made it home?

I know why it's like this - Zemekis has said in interviews that he makes sure that trailers are structured like that, because research says that the majority modern audiences like to know what they're seeing before they even set foot in the theatre. Maybe so, but the majority of modern audiences made Elton John's "Candle in the Wind" the best-selling song of all time, and gave Bush a second term - popular sure doesn't mean right, to steal a line from Penn and Teller. His unfortunate tendency to give the game away months before the movie comes out comes from the instinct of a salesman, not of a storyteller - the former cares only about the product, the latter cares only about the effect it has on his audience, like a poker player who holds onto his Aces until he's damn ready to use them. This rant is made mostly out of irritation than out of anger - Zemekis is SUCH a good filmmaker that it really irks me that his instincts in the area are so wrong for what should be his main goal.

I remember seeing a movie called The Shawshank Redemption. It tanked at the box office. But the film is now legend, because its surprises were left for the audience to discover. And discover them they did, as they were meant to - by seeing the film themselves. Box office results will fade. The power of a good story well told lives on. Which would you prefer?