Days of December Christmas Movie Watch-a-thon - Day 4: The Polar Express

I am now restarting the movie where I left off, as we had to stop it because it was scaring Little Man. I'm still quite taken aback that it did scare him...perhaps startle is a better word?

We made it to a scene where the main boy is on top of the Polar Express, and runs into a hermit of some sort. The part that really disturbed LM was when there was this scene where a train ticket was blowing about in the wind, kind of quietly past wild animals, through woods, etc., and then it landed on the snow. All of a sudden, the Polar Express steamed by, and LM jumped and started to quiver! It was so sad.

Oh  my word, I'm so glad we stopped the movie when we did -- there is a terrifying marionette screaming right now. Sheesh!

Okay, so, I was a huge fan of The Polar Express when I was a kid. I don't remember when I started reading it, or really any of the details surrounding my reading it, other than that I remember it, and I remembered enjoying it.

I remember when they said they were coming out with The Polar Express, the movie. I thought that was a terrible idea. How were they going to turn my beautiful story into a feature-length film?
By adding a whole bunch of weird stuff, contrived plots, and strange twists, that's how. I'm not saying it's the worst movie ever, but it will be a while before we watch it again, and not just because it freaked out LM.

Speaking of, CGI people freak me out pretty badly. There are a lot of those in this movie. The pace of the film is really slow in lots of places. To make up for it, they throw in really dramatic scenes that don't add a lot to the actual story. They also have this very sad little boy character who makes me want to cry just by looking at him. Aside from that, I didn't really "bond" with any of the characters in the movie. I basically felt like everyone was a caricature of a character...if that makes any sense.

I don't know...I hate to give a "bad review," but I just really didn't like the movie. I have to confess that I largely feel that I disliked the movie because of how it varied so drastically from the book. Whether that's fair or not, you can be the judge. I just can't seem to separate the two in my mind. The book is phenomenal and, I'm sure, inspired a bunch of creative ideas...I just prefer the simpler, original, book-version.