THE POLAR EXPRESS: There’s No Greater Gift than Friendship

The Polar Express (2004) – Directed by Robert Zemeckis – Starring Tom Hanks, Josh Hutcherson, Daryl Sabara, Nona Gaye, Peter Scolari, Eddie Deezen, Charles Fleischer, Steven Tyler, and Michael Jeter.

If I had kids, THE POLAR EXPRESS would be a part of our yearly Christmas movie marathon.

I just dig everything about the film: the characters, the story, the colors, the message, the motion captur-

Well, okay, the motion-capture animation still looks kinda freaky, and points out one of the flaws with using this technology – it only looks worse as the years go on. You can pop Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs into your Blu-ray, DVD, or VCR and even though it’s now 75 years old, it still looks completely gorgeous. Quality hand-drawn animation from the distant past doesn’t suffer much in comparison to modern hand-drawn animation. There’s a difference, to be sure, but that largely comes from the other techniques used in making a movie and not from the animation itself.

Motion capture is so dependent on technology, though, that aspects like the rendering of hair and faces have become much improved since 2004, giving earlier films that employ this technology a bit of a choppy look.

That’s not to say that motion capture is bad tech or that POLAR EXPRESS is only worth watching if you can get past all of the human’s melted faces. On the whole, the movie still looks really good, but the humans are the worst looking parts of what’s otherwise a gorgeous film. The train, the wilderness, the North Pole … all of them are beautifully rendered. The movement of the humans and elves, too, is pretty good, but those weird faces creep me out a bit. The result is that it’s hard for me to buy into POLAR EXPRESS as something real. Even the opening voice over narration from our protagonist as an adult (Tom Hanks) gives EXPRESS the feeling of a story within a story; that is, what we’re seeing is less the actual event than the representation of an event based on memory.

There’s nothing overly complex about the film’s narrative. A young boy (Tom Hanks/Josh Hutcherson/Daryl Sabara) who’s starting to doubt in Christmas gets to take a ride on a magical train to the North Pole, where he meets Santa and has his belief in Christmas eternally affirmed. What makes the film work, however, is how likable our main character is and how earnestly he views his actions throughout the movie. He does some less-than-perfect things, but he always admits his mistakes, even in the face of a very angry Conductor. I like this kid. He’s struggling with the idea of having to grow up, of having to accept that the world is a different place than he previously understood it to be. Losing faith in Santa isn’t just about Santa to our unnamed protagonist – it’s about all of adolescence.

The lesson he learns in EXPRESS isn’t so much that Santa Claus (also Tom Hanks) is real as that you don’t have to let go of your belief in childlike things as you age. EXPRESS doesn’t suggest that you can Peter Pan your way through life, but rather that simple ideas and concepts are worthy of being taken into adulthood. When our protagonist and the female protagonist (Nona Gaye/Tinashe/Meagan Moore) help Billy (Peter Scolari/Jimmy Bennet/Matthew Hall) come out of his shell, it speaks to how powerful friendship and goodwill can be to a person who has experienced little of either. It’s a simple idea but it’s also a good one, and a Christmas movie is a fine time to make that point.

There’s a story here about the train ride and the experience in the North Pole, but the plot points are less important than seeing good kids do good things and be rewarded for it. THE POLAR EXPRESS never quite ascends to the level of a classic, but I’m always pleasantly reminded about how much I like the film when I watch it. The movie’s motion capture will remain eternally creepy but the story remains eternally heartwarming.

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My latest book, STUFFED ANIMALS FOR HIRE: THE CHRISTMAS OPERATION is now available for purchase in PAPERBACK and KINDLE formats.

SAFH is a kid’s espionage novella, but it’s also a tribute to the television shows I watched as a kid: The A-Team, Magnum PI, Knight Rider, Hardcastle and McCormack, Riptide, Dukes of Hazzard and generally any show where Post and Carpenter did the music. Recommended age? If you let your kid watch superhero cartoons or Knight Rider reruns, SAFH should be age appropriate.

Here’s the back cover description:

Jurgen the Gorilla. Throne the Lion. Bronze the Golden Eagle. Ray the Brown Bear. Bottle the Dolphin. Dev the Lynxwoman. 3 the Triceratops. Ptera the Pterodactyl. These eight stuffed animals make up the Return Squadron. For seven months they have worked together to return disconnected stuffed animals home. But now … on their final mission, the Return Squadron seek to steal the legendary Map of Everything. Before Christmas morning arrives, three of the Squadron will turn traitor, four will be stranded, and one will never see another Christmas.

BAH, HUMDUCK! A LOONEY TUNES CHRISTMAS: Who Needs a White Christmas When You Can Have a Green One?

Bah, Humduck! A Looney Tunes Christmas (2006) – Directed by Charles Visser – Starring Joe Alaskey, Bob Bergen, Jim Cummings, June Foray, Maurice LaMarche, Tara Strong, and Billy West.

BAH, HUMDUCK! A LOONEY TUNES CHRISTMAS is a bit of a Christmas downer.

It’s a Looney Tunes interpretation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, but it’s not a very good one. HUMDUCK is definitely for kids and not for adults. It’s bright but everything is overdone and the movie is far less interested in redoing A Christmas Carol as it is simply showing Daffy Duck being as big of a jerk as possible.

Daffy is the Scrooge character and owner of the Lucky Duck superstore. He’s every bit the total, over-the-top money-loving, holiday-hating businessman you’d expect. We spend a good half of the special in the store, simply watching Daffy be unreasonable. It’s a curious decision, but speaks to what HUMDUCK is really after – which isn’t to tell a Dickensian story of redemption. No, the entire point of HUMDUCK is to spend half the movie watching Daffy be a jerk to everyone, and the second half watching Daffy being a jerk to everyone … and get beat up as much as possible.

The result is a very unsatisfying Christmas special. I’m not opposed to a bit of cartoon violence – St. Nick knows I grew up on cartoons with plenty of violence, from Starblazers to G.I. Joe to Transformers to, yes, Looney Tunes – but HUMDUCK takes it to a ridiculous degree. What ruins the violence for me is both the amount of physical abuse Daffy has to endure, but also the reasons behind it. When I watch the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote films, I’m not bothered at all by the violence because it’s part of their dynamic. In HUMDUCK, however, the violence is doled out in specific response to Daffy being unreasonable. When the Christmas Ghosts start visiting him and showing him the past, present, and future, Daffy’s continued stubbornness is greeted by Granny and Tweety beating him with a candy cane, Yosemite Sam punching and kicking him at every turn, and Taz … well, Taz is actually the least violent of the Ghosts.

Physical comedy and simulated violence is all well and good, but there are other ways to make people laugh. All I’m asking for here is a little variety. HUMDUCK could easily dump half the violence in the film simply by eliminating all the instances of violence being used as a counter to Daffy’s dickishness.

The story is where HUMDUCK really suffers, though. Half the film takes place in the department store, and the point here simply seems to be to see how many Looney Tunes characters the animators can fit into the special. The back-half is where the Christmas Carol takes place, but it’s rushed to the point where I don’t buy Daffy’s conversion. By focusing so much of the special on Daffy, and using everyone else as bit players, there was time to show Daffy slowly redeem himself via the three Ghosts, but what we get is a forced conversion at the end that practically comes out of nowhere.

HUMDUCK isn’t the worst Christmas special ever made, and if you’re jonesing to see Speedy Gonzalez assemble toys really quickly, or you’ve always wanted to watch Marvin the Martian cry because he can’t get home to Mars to be with his family for Christmas, or you wondered what it would be like if the Looney Tunes characters all worked at Walmart … well, this is the special for you.

SCROOGED: I’m Sure Charles Dickens Would Have Wanted to See Her Nipples

Scrooged (1988) – Directed by Richard Donner – Starring Bill Murray, Karen Allen, John Forsythe, Bobcat Goldthwait, Carol Kane, David Johansen, Robert Mitchum, Alfre Woodard, John Glover, Jamie Farr, Buddy Hackett, and Brian Doyle Murray.

There are lots of adaptations of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, but none of them scream the 1980s as loud as SCROOGED. Bill Murray, Karen Allen, John Forsythe, Bobcat Goldthwait, the Buster Poindexter guy, and the Solid Gold dancers all had a big decade, and they all come together in a rather entertaining comedy about a TV executive producing a live Christmas Carol broadcast who simultaneously has a Christmas Carol experience himself.

Frank Cross (Murray) is a complete dick, and runs his network like his own personal kingdom, despite the fact that it’s Robert Mitchum’s kingdom. He hates Christmas, hates subordinates, and hates himself. He drinks a lot and insults and bullies everyone he comes across. What’s nice about Murray playing the Scrooge character is his relative youth. Frank Cross isn’t a man at the end of his life, but in the middle of it. Ebeneezer not only knows he’s a jerk, but has suffered a lifetime of becoming increasingly miserable and isolated so his pump has been primed for a change. Cross is half his life from that moment; even though he’s been separated from his One True Love, Claire (Karen Allen), Frank is still a man climbing the social and economic ladder.

Despite being set in the present and despite not using the names of the Dickens’ characters, SCROOGED follows the general pattern of A Christmas Carol pretty closely – Frank is visited by a ghost of an ex-collegae, Lew (Forsythe), who warns him that three ghosts will visit him this night. The Ghosts come in expected order, and Frank is . The Ghost of Christmas Past (Johansen) is an incredible boor and cloaks himself in the garb of a taxi driver. (Not THE Taxi Driver, but a taxi driver.) As much as I dislike this character, the decision to start Frank off with a gruff ghost is a good one, as Frank needs someone who’s totally self-assured and doesn’t depend on him for anything. That’s the Ghost of Christmas Past – unshaven, bad teeth, cackling laugh … this is nearly as far out of Frank’s comfort zone as you can get. The connection between Past and Frank’s early days is pretty clear; Past represents the working class life Frank left behind. They witness Frank’s dad (Brian Doyle Murray) giving him a cut of meat for Christmas and while the ghost is appalled, Frank defends his father’s act as a good lesson.

There’s always a lot of weight placed on the Christmas Past ghost, as his visitation creates the back story for Scrooge. Past shows Frank his childhood, his early days as a low-level employee at the TV network’s Christmas party, happy times with Claire, and their eventual break-up, when Frank chooses his career (a dinner date with his boss, Lew) over dinner with their friends. Claire is heartbroken, but Frank is too career-obsessed to care. That they have this chat as Frank is in costume, playing Frisbee the Dog on a kid’s show, only serves to enforce the disconnect between Frank and Claire. It’s an absurd moment but it’s played perfectly straight by Allen and Murray.

And let’s just stop here for a moment to appreciate how awesome Karen Allen is as an actress. She’s plays off Murray as effortlessly and perfectly here as she does with Harrison Ford in Raiders of the Lost Ark, Peter Reigert in Animal House, and Jeff Bridges in Starman. (Though, admittedly, it’s been awhile since I’ve seen that last one – feel free to call me out if I’m off-base.) All four of those actors require a different set of skills from Allen, and she usually only has a small amount of scenes to put those skills into action.

Christmas Past is followed by Christmas Present (Carol Kane), who continually smacks Frank around. She takes Frank to visit his brother James (John Murray), replacing the traditional role of nephew. The result plays the same, however; his brother laments Frank’s absence from his life and gets a trivia question about Gilligan’s Island wrong as Frank watches in disgust. (Not enough people give Dickens credit for his influence on Sherwood Schwartz sitcoms.) We also get a visit to his assistant Grace’s (Alfre Woodward) house, where he discovers that Grace has a kid who hasn’t talked since his father died.

Back to the network studio and we see Frank awaiting the visit of the third ghost as the live broadcast of A Christmas Carol (with Buddy Hackett as Scrooge) begins. Christmas Future gets only a quick appearance, sticking around just long enough to show Frank Grace’s mute son holed up in a mental institution and his own funeral.

Frank decides to change and his born again sequence is one of the greats. Murray plays it as much like a man coming off the rails as a man with a new focus in his life, really doing an outstanding job of walking that thin line between inspired and insane. He interrupts the live broadcast of A Christmas Carol to deliver a heart-felt plea for people to connect with their families. It’s a really great, really fresh version of the story, and Murray is completely convincing as a man unburdened by the weight he wouldn’t even admit he was carrying.

There’s plenty of great supporting work turned in by Bobcat Goldthwait, Robert Mitchum, and John Glover, yet for all of this, SCROOGED is merely a good movie and not a great one. One of the reasons why Scrooge is such a great character is because he is at the end of his life. He’s old, isolated, and bitter, and his trip with the ghosts reveals a man who’s life has gone wrong, and whose conversion speaks to the idea that it’s never too late to change. Frank Cross, on the other hand, is an unlikable lout in the middle of his life’s journey, drunk with power and not yet isolated from the world, and as great as Murray is, his descents into weepy territory don’t carry any weight to it. I’m not sure whether to laugh at the absurdity of his waterworks or feel empathy for his realizations.

I like SCROOGED but this was the first time I’d ever watched the entire movie in one piece; I enjoyed Donner’s film but I can’t say I feel any remorse at not having watched it previous to now. It’s a good movie but it’s ultimately a diversion rather than a film that sticks with me.

Be sure to check out the Holiday Review Index for all the Holiday-themed reviews to be found at Atomic Anxiety.