What is the most precious gift of all? The answer is faith, according to Chris van Allsburg's The Polar Express - an enchanting short tale of a boy's dreamy train ride to meet Santa Claus at the North Pole.
Adapted from page to screen by award-winning director Robert Zemeckis (Forrest Gump, Cast Away), the film bears the same uplifting spirit of Allsburg's classic Christmas tale but is spiced with some tremendous spectacles and awesome computer animation.
The film tells the story of a nameless boy (played by Tom Hanks) who begins to doubt the existence of Santa Claus on a snowy Christmas Eve.
Alarmed by a thunderous engine roar, the boy - still dressed in his pyjamas and slippers - rushes out into the snow to find a gleaming black train stopped in front of his home.
Asked by the train's conductor (Hanks) to climb abroad the magic train, the boy joins a group of other children to embark on a self-discovery journey. This not only leads them to Santa Claus (Hanks again) in the North Pole, but also brings them the valuable gifts of hope and friendship.
With the help of sophisticated technology, Zemeckis turns this classic Christmas tale into an exhilarating and visually stunning computer-animated feature.