The Polar Express a Hit With Me

Last month I was walking through my living room on the way to do something or other when I noticed what my wife and daughter were watching on TV.  It was another one of those Christmas shows, a movie whose title I was familiar with but never got around to watching: The Polar Express.  I quickly forgot what I was doing and became deeply engrossed in it, even though the movie was about halfway through already.  A boy was riding a magical train to the North Pole where Santa and his elves lived...only this boy had stopped believing in Santa. The story was poignant and typical Christmas: what mesmerized me was the way animation, computer enhancement, and real-life acting were seamlessly mixed together to form a unique type of cinema with its own special appearance.  Tom Hanks was ubiquitous, playing the train's conductor, the story's narrator (the boy grown up and looking back), a  mysterious transient on traintop, and Santa himself.  The focus of the story was four of the children riding to see Santa...along with that conductor.  Each child had an important lesson to learn from their experience, a lesson revealed by the message that Hanks the Conductor punched out on their magical tickets.  Later on I watched The Polar Express again, this time from the traditional starting point, to complete the experience.  For such a movie that emphasized special effects, thrill ride scenes, and graphics, I was surprised by how deep both the story and characters were.  The movie, as I later discovered, was an adaptation from a written story by Chris Van Allsburg.  This was a real tear-jerking experience for me and I would recommend The Polar Express to anyone, at any time of the year...