Polar Express, The

Aroview: Expertly animating the childrens' book by Chris Van Allsburg, this makes a Christmas Eve excursion into mythical childhood fantasies of Santa Claus and his fabled North Pole kingdom.

Set mainly around the experience of a young disbeliever, who ends up aboard a sleek railway carriage zooming across the moonlit Earth, on a journey to the heart of... er, whiteness, this drifts through the stories of a range of ghostly passengers. And yet, while promising to access a certain spectral dreamworld, it remains resolutely on the tracks of warm sentiment.

Interestingly, most of the characters were 'acted' by Tom Hanks, using CGI motion-tracking technology, and he nabbed most of the voice parts too!

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