Animated Tom Hanks flick wrecks, burns

Boys and girls, please welcome "The Polar Express," Hollywood's 21st century, $140 million dollar, computer generated picture book you can now read on the big screen.\nBased on the 1985 Chris Van Allsburg book, "The Polar Express" opens on Christmas Eve where your typical pre-adolescent boy falls asleep after coming to terms with the disappointing revelation that Santa Claus doesn't really exist. Apparently, disbelief earns you an express ticket on the Polar Express which immediately pulls up in the front yard sounding more like an invasion of tanks you'd rightfully run away from much less "climb on." \nBut in movies, everyone climbs on, and the next thing you know, you're on the worst trip you'll probably ever take up North. Not only is the unsmiling, stressed-out, Scrooge-like conductor the last person you'd want for your guide, there's also a menacing ghost that doesn't seem to know what to do with himself, an obnoxious know-it-all, in-your-face nerd armed with Steve Urkel's abandoned voice and a kid that looks like he wandered onto the Polar Express right out of "The Sixth Sense." The train itself is a fragile antique piece of junk, broken brakes and all, and the careening cliffs made me wonder if I wasn't actually watching "America's Greatest Roller Coasters in 3-D." Seriously, since when did "The Nightmare Before Christmas" become a genre? The North Pole looks more like an ominous post-alien invasion maze of deserted streets than a toy factory, and the elves gathered in a cultish frenzy at the town square made me wonder: is this what "I, Robot" would look like at Christmas? \nFor all the technological hype, it very well could be, although here it works to much less successful results -- the animation actually proves the most detrimental element of the film. The characters look like walking robots complete with mechanical arms, glazed eyes and neutral expressions that completely discredit the over-enthusiastic voice work. The technology does allow all the adult males in the movie to both look and sound like Tom Hanks, which was probably supposed to be a good thing but turns out to be just plain creepy. The move redeems itself somewhat with a predictably sappy ending that you feel coerced into liking simply because it's Christmas -- our hero comes home with a completely transformed mindset (he believes, although I wouldn't be sure I'd want to) and quickly crawls back under the covers where he belongs. In my opinion, he would have been better off if he had just stayed there to begin with.