Let me get this out of the way right now: I'm pretty sure kids will love The Polar Express, the full-length movie based on Chris Van Allsburg's beloved 32-page book. While I like to think that I still have an inner child, Robert Zemeckis's latest cinematic stunt gave me the wrong kind of chills. Using motion-capture CGI technology--live actors and cameras and reflective pellets and infrared capture receptors--Zemeckis has made a movie during which, every …showed first 75 words of 542 total…

…showed last 75 words of 542 total…Boy's lack of bedhead, and absence of muss after a tumble in a coal pile). The Polar Express succeeds in fits and starts--some excitement is generated in the pursuit of a golden ticket--but only finds itself in its half-hour-long ending, in which the children infiltrate the secret machinery of Christmas. Ultimately, the ever-gear-shifting film resembles the Conductor's remark about Santa's multitudinous elves: "Well-oiled machine." I'm just an old-fashioned humanoid kind of guy, so sue me.