Polar Express, The (Blu-ray)

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When "The Polar Express" was released, it was one of the first films to employ Performance Motion Capture. Actors wore latex suits with little dots all over them and their faces to record every movement, which was transferred to computers as virtual skeletons to which skin, features, and clothing were added. In 2004, "Mo Cap" was cutting edge, and if groundbreaking CG effects were enough to win an Oscar for an otherwise so-so film like "Titanic," the sophisticated animation and holiday theme will probably be enough to keep "The Polar Express" in the annual Christmas rotation.

On Blu-ray, the animation looks especially amazing. But heartwarming it's not.

There's something about the Mo-Cap figures that seems not just a little cold, but a little creepy as well. While we watch in amazement at the movement and rendering of character, we're always conscious that we're watching a process on display rather than getting emotionally caught up in the characters. Because the adults have wrinkles or stubble they seem more textured and therefore more natural, but Santa and the children have smooth and reflective faces that look more like wax than real skin.

For a Christmas movie there are some pretty creepy scenes and characters, too . . . and Tom Hanks plays all of them. That's the other amazing thing about this film, though. If you thought "Cast Away" was a tour de force, in "The Polar Express" Hanks plays the part of the hero boy who wants to believe in Santa Claus, the boy's father (a perfectly animated likeness of Hanks), the conductor on the train that transports children on a faith-boosting excursion to the North Pole, a ghost-like hobo (the creepiest) who camps on top of the train, a Scrooge puppet, and even Santa himself. On one short bonus feature Hanks called the film "ridiculously challenging, but in a good way."

Director Robert Zemeckis ("Back to the Future," "Who Framed Roger Rabbit") teams up with his favorite actor Hanks again, but "Forrest Gump" (1994) and "Cast Away" (2000) were collaborations that are tough to top. You get the feeling that they may have been looking to hit one out of the park with Mo-Cap and Hanks' six voices, but the expansion of Chris Van Allsburg's popular children's picture book from 38 pages to a 100-minute screenplay just doesn't retain the same level of magic. Basically, a boy who doubts the existence of Santa hops on a train that rumbles past his house on Christmas Eve. On board are other children who need a renewal of faith. They get to the North Pole, but because so many scenes seemed inserted to showcase what the animators could do (like a bizarre, high-energy "Hot Chocolate" song sung by waiters, or a long scene involving a lost ticket that floats like the feather in "Forrest Gump." Most of what was added to the Van Allsburg book are action sequences or things that, when you think about them, really have little to do with the main plot.

There are moments of peril in this film, with a runaway train providing the most action. But the animation throughout has been so spectacular and so consciously on a viewer's mind that when Santa appears and we see the Pole, it doesn't seem nearly as magical as we might have imagined.

While Hanks handles most of the main characters, the other ones that we spend time with is an African-American "hero" girl (Nona Gaye), a "know-it-all" (Eddie Deezen), and the engineers (Michael Jeter). As I said, there's nothing all that warm about any of them, due to the peculiar nature of Performance Motion Capture, which strives to create an animated version of real people but ends up falling somewhere in the cracks between animation and live-action. It's a technique to be admired, and what Zemeckis and Hanks do with this film is technically amazing. I just don't think it's going to warm many hearts or roast any chestnuts.