of 2004, tying with The Incredibles. Ian Nathan of Empire Magazine gave the film three out of five stars, and said, "For all the fairy-lit wonder, some will rail at the idea of Back to the Futures director dabbling with such a schmaltzy tale. Cynics will sneeze in shock; children will cuddle up and dream along." Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian also gave the film three out of five stars, saying, "After a promising and distinctive start, a railway adventure to meet Santa runs off the rails." The character design and animation were criticized for dipping into the uncanny valley. Peter Travers of Rolling Stone gave the film 1 star out of 4, and called it "a failed and lifeless experiment in which everything goes wrong". Stephanie Zacharek of Salon gave the film 1.5 stars out of 5 and said, "I could probably have tolerated the incessant jitteriness of The Polar Express if the look of it didn't give me the creeps." Geoff Pevere of the Toronto Star stated, "If I were a child, I'd have nightmares. Come to think of it, I did anyway." Paul Clinton from CNN called it "at best disconcerting, and at worst, a wee bit horrifying". Manohla Dargis of The New York Times gave the film 1.5 stars out of 5 and wrote, "There's no way of knowing whether they drank the company Kool-Aid. Still, from the looks of The Polar Express it's clear that, together with Mr. Zemeckis, this talented gang has on some fundamental level lost touch with the human aspect of film." Accolades The film was nominated at the 77th Academy Awards in the categories of Best Sound Editing (Randy Thom and Dennis Leonard), Best Sound Mixing (Randy Thom, Tom Johnson, Dennis S. Sands and William B. Kaplan), and Best Original Song for "Believe" (music and lyrics by Glen Ballard and Alan Silvestri), but lost all three to The Incredibles, Ray, and The Motorcycle Diaries respectively. The film was nominated at the 3rd Visual Effects Society Awards in the category of "Outstanding Performance by an Animated Character in an Animated Motion Picture." In 2008, the American Film Institute nominated The Polar Express for its Top 10 Animated Films list. See also List of Christmas films Santa Claus in film The Little Engine That Could - a 1991 animated short References Further reading External links 2004 films 2004 computer-animated films 2000s English-language films