I think was seeing the trailer for Zemeckis' latest "animated" film, Beowulf, today that finally got me to break down and see this movie.

There is nothing really wrong with the story or the concept of the film... boy, who doesn't believe in Christmas, goes to visit Santa Claus... as a book with beautiful pictures that is all of 32 pages, I'm sure it worked out fine.

However, as a movie of 100 minutes, there is so much filler that it stretches what plot exists to something paper thin. I think it would've been better off as one of those half-hour holiday specials on TV.

But then, of course, we couldn't have EPIC... yes, in the absence of plot, character development and coherence, we have instead sweeping camera moves and demonstrations of CG brilliance... which isn't even all the brilliant. I lost count the number of times around during the closing minutes when the camera would go from a close up of some piece of action to a landscape size wide shot of the square around Santa's giant Christmas tree. It was as if, short of a more original idea, we'll just show yet another picture of 10 zillion CG elves standing about in the crowd.

Also, all action sequences in the film are basically rollercoaster shorts... exciting perhaps the first time, but not really on the fourth, fifth or sixth iteration.

And, as I'm sure has been previously mentioned by other reviewers... there's the creepy, glassy-eyed kids.

I'm sure this film was a lovely R&D exercise for the company, but as a piece of entertainment it is infinitely skippable.