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.

ROMANCING THE STONE: I Ain’t Cheap, But I Can Be Had

Romancing the Stone (1985) – Directed by Robert Zemeckis – Starring Kathleen Turner, Michael Douglas, Danny DeVito, Alfonso Arau, Manuel Ojeda, Holland Taylor, Mary Ellen Trainor, and Ted White.

Maybe ROMANCING THE STONE was a bigger influence on me than I ever realized.

I always liked the film, even if it wasn’t ever a movie in heavy rotation. For me, it was something I watched in the vein of Raiders of the Lost Ark, but that meant I watched it a few times and that was it. When I watched it again last night, there were only a few parts that I remembered, but what struck a chord with me this time around was closer to the film’s true intentions: the adventure/romance writer forced to live a real life adventure/romance.

After all, that was kind of the point of DREAMER’S SYNDROME. I wanted to force characters to confront their fantasies. “Dreams are more dangerous when they happen in the light of day” and all that. (If you want to take a moment to go and order the book, read it, and then come back to this review, well, it’ll be here when you get back. It’s over 400 pages, so it might take you a minute.) Confronting one’s fantasies is what Joan Wilder (Kathleen Turner) is forced to do in ROMANCING THE STONE.

Joan Wilder is a popular romance novelist finishing off her latest book. The film opens inside Joan’s novel as Angelique (Kymberly Herrin) is facing down Grogan (Ted White), the man who killed everyone she cared about, including her dog. Angelique kills him and rides off, where she meets Jesse, the rugged romantic interest. As that story ends on an emotional high point, we cut back to Joan’s apartment where our fantasizer is banging away at her typewriter and crying her heart out. To celebrate her accomplishment, Joan and her cat have a rousing night by the fire with minimal bit of alcohol.

The next day Joan is off to her publishers when she’s given a mailed envelope by a neighbor. Her editor, Gloria (Holland Taylor), brings her to lunch and forces Joan to have a bit of a good time. Gloria is using the opportunity to troll for men and Joan is incredibly uncomfortable by all of this man hunger.

It’s hard not to be worried at this point in the film that Joan is going to be a ridiculous character, but screenwriter Diane Thomas, director Robert Zemeckis, and especially Kathleen Turner continually keep Joan grounded and make an honest-to-goodness character out of her. When it turns out that the package she received from her sister is a treasure map, that her sister Elaine (Mary Ellen Trainor) has been kidnapped, and the only way to save Elaine is for Joan to fly to Columbia and return the map.

Joan is in hysterics because she doesn’t really want to fly to Columbia, of course, and Gloria thinks it’s a preposterous idea, but Joan is dead set on going, and it’s moments like this that make her a real character and not just a silly type. Joan is terrified to go to Columbia, but her sister needs saving and so she does it. Turner plays it perfectly; Joan is neither too frightened to go nor too brave to blunder stoically forward.

The main kidnapper, Ira (Zack Norman), sends his cousin Ralph (Danny DeVito) to retrieve her, but Ralph is consistently outwitted by Colonel Zolo (Manuel Ojeda). When Joan gets to Columbia, she’s set upon by Zolo, who steers her onto the wrong bus and far away from Cartagena, where he intends to take the map for himself. Joan’s bus gets in an accident and after everyone bails, Zolo draws his gun on her to get the map.

Enter Jack T. Colton (Michael Douglas), a ne’er-do-well who initially refuses to help Joan out, but tells her, “I ain’t cheap, but I can be had.” With Jack on board, he and Joan set out for Cartagena. Wacky hijinks ensue. There’s nothing incredibly unique about ROMANCING THE STONE from this point out, but films like this largely fail or succeed based on the chemistry of the leads and the chemistry between Douglas and Turner is fantastic. It’s a joy just to watch them interact with one another. When Jack chides her for only having heeled shoes, he busts off the heel so she can better walk in the jungle.

“Those were Italian,” she tells him incredulously.

“Now they’re practical,” he shoots back.

On the run from Zolo’s men, Jack puts himself between them and Joan. Instead of playing the scared mouse, Joan decides to try and make her way across a rickety bridge. Joan’s determination is another sign that she’s far more than some weepy romance novelist afraid to leave her apartment; while her novels tap into the feminine fantasy of the handsome rogue, Joan’s drive out in the real world is to do whatever it takes to get back to her sister. Reality has unwittingly cast her in the hero’s role and Joan discovers that she is capable of playing that role for herself.

The two of them begin to fall for each other as they adventure progresses, but Jack is still thinking of splitting with the big honking green emerald.

He doesn’t completely do that, of course, but there’s a bit of will-he/won’t-he at play before he finally comes back for good and chooses to help Joan over getting the emerald out of the crocodile that swallowed it. What’s great about this sequence is that Jack proves that Joan is more important to him than money, and then Joan proves she doesn’t need Jack’s help to get out of the jam she’s in.

Joan heads back to the States, writes the adventure as her latest novel, and then Jack shows up with a big sailboat so they can ride off together on the boat through the city.

It’s a feel good ending for a feel good movie. Douglas, Turner, and DeVito are all fantastic (as is Alfonso Arau as a drug lord that happens to be a big fan of Joan’s books) and Robert Zemeckis keeps everything going at a brisk pace. ROMANCING THE STONE is as good a film as these bickering romances get.

MARS NEEDS MOMS: My Mom, She Vacuums the House, She Vacuums the House

Mars Needs Moms (2011) – Directed by Robert Zemeckis – Starring Seth Green, Tom Everett Scott, Joan Cusack, Elisabeth Harnois, Dan Fogler, Dee Bradley Baker, and Mindy Sterling.

I almost decided January was going to be “Box Office Bombs” Month instead of “Catching Up with 2011″ Month, which means that MARS NEEDS MOMS was going to get covered either way.

Apparently, I hate myself.

MARS NEEDS MOMS is the kind of movie that I find so dreadful about 15 minutes in that I want to stop watching. I’ve done this before – the craptacular Hobo with a Shotgun couldn’t keep me entertained, but I stuck with MARS because of three reasons: 1. I’m a fan of Berkeley Breathed, whose book of the same name (which I haven’t read) serves as the basis for the movie, 2. the film is actually really great to look at so long as there aren’t any humans on the screen, and 3. I was desperate to find one character in the movie that wasn’t completely annoying.

The answer to that question is: at 37 minutes, we meet Ki (Elisabeth Harnois), who is only 3/4 annoying.

MARS NEEDS MOMS is such a fine technological achievement and such a colossal storytelling disaster that I find myself agreeing with the idea that Zemeckis has gone of the deep end, becoming far too interested in what he can get his machines to do and not interested enough in the story he’s telling. There’s no way to know that for sure, of course, but it’s the only theory I can come up with that fits this movie. To be clear, as pretty as all the backgrounds might be, MARS NEEDS MOMS is a dreadful movie, with a story told in such an unappealing manner that I don’t know how Zemeckis ever let this film get off the ground, let alone out the door.

The basic plot of MARS NEEDS MOMS is that, well, Mars needs a mom to help program their nanny bots. They kidnap Milo’s mom (Joan Cusack) because she does a good job keeping Milo (played by Seth Green, voiced by Seth Dusky) in line. On the night of her kidnapping, Milo says he’d be better off without a mom, then the Martians come and kidnap her, he gets pulled into the spaceship, goes to Mars, and then has a wacky adventure as he tries to save her. In defter hands, there’s plenty of potential here, but everything about this story is told in an irritating, off-putting manner.

Let’s start with Milo. The only thing that could make Milo more annoying is if he was voiced by Jay Baruchel, who officially has the Worst Voice Ever. Milo is a complete dick to his mom, but worse than that, even when he travels to Mars to save her, he can’t stop being annoying. Almost everything he says is voiced in a whiny, pleading, half shout. Even when he gives voice to why he wants to save his mom, it’s because of what she does for him, so he never really advances past being a selfish assh*le. Plus, the whole performance capture business makes him look creepy.

Then there’s Gribble (Dan Fogler), who might literally be the most annoying character in an animated movie ever, depending on how you classify Jar Jar Binks and the entire cast of Song of the South. Gribble basically led Milo’s story years earlier, and he serves as a symbol of what happens if you grow up without a mom and watch too much TV and play too many video games – which is to say you grow up to be fat, annoying, and socially awkward.

But mostly annoying. Seriously, the guy walks around saying things like, “Gribbletastic.”

Then there’s Ki, the well-meaning, bright, full of life Martian rebel, who is totally awesome in spirit, but a disaster in speech. She’s seen a few Earth programs and has adopted the lingo of Earth even though she doesn’t fully know what it means. She says things like, “What is up? What is going down?”

Who thought those were good lines?

Ki paints all over the staid Martian buildings, which is cool, but then they turn her into a silly little lovesick girl just because Gribble’s face changes color. You know, because he’s a guy and she’s a girl.

There is one moment in the film that isn’t annoying and that’s when Ki shows the Martians that things were not always as mechanical as they are now. Martian society used to have whole families before the Supervisor turned everything cold and robotic. When the female soldiers realize that things used to be different, it’s a real moment.

So there you have it – a whole film with one honest moment amidst one of the most annoying set of characters ever assembled on film. I don’t like trashing horrible films, but every once in a while a big pile of horrible makes it’s way to the theaters, and MARS NEEDS MOMS is just such a film. If nothing else, it proves that not even assembling talented people across the board is a guarantee of mediocrity, let alone success.