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<font size="4"><br>The Polar Express</font>
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<br>movie review by Gary Johnson</font>
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<p>Based on the Caldecott Medal-winning children's book by Chris Van Allsburg, <i>The Polar Express</i> makes a marvelous transition to the silver screen. Children's books don't always fare so well. Look no further than last year's <i>Cat in the Hat</i> for an example of a children's book that fell flat when translated by Hollywood. Slim children's books like <i>The Polar Express</i> and <i>Cat in the Hat</i> require a considerable amount of expansion in order to fill out a feature length running time. <i>Cat in the Hat</i> collapsed because of its misguided expansions, which provided nothing more than irrelevancies that distracted from the simplicity of the storytelling. <i>The Polar Express</i> also gets opened up, but there is much more between the pages of <i>The Polar Express</i> than in <i>Cat in the Hat</i>.
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