Upon the arrival of the awards season, Silvestri and Ballard received the bulk of the recognition aimed at The Polar Express (along with sound-related technical nominations), with their Josh Groban-performed song "Believe" receiving a Grammy Award along with Oscar and Golden Globe nominations. Of the songs, "Believe" is not surprisingly the most memorable, used as the score's primary thematic identity as well. Its tone is appropriately inspirational, its melody pretty, and Groban's performance is, as usual, gorgeous. But that can't hide the fact that the structure of the song owes a considerable amount to Andrew Lloyd Weber's "Music of the Night" from The Phantom of the Opera and James Horner and Barry Mann's "Somewhere Out There" from An American Tail. This nagging feeling of similarities between the music in The Polar Express and previous films is perpetual problem, with other melodic portions resembling Randy Newman's The Natural (oddly) and, in the instrumental portions, John Williams' Home Alone and Danny Elfman's Edward Scissorhands. The two hyperactive ensemble songs led by Hanks, "The Polar Express" and "Hot Chocolate" are countered by the redeeming and subdued "character in longing" song of stereotype in "When Christmas Comes to Town." Of more relation to the first song is the vintage jazz and rock combination in "Rockin' on the Top of the World." An original choral hymn (in traditional style) was penned by the composers in "Spirit of the Season," a piece with all the beauty of the holidays but vacant perhaps of any deep sense of authenticity (which gives you pause when you contemplate Christmas music recorded during the summer). Most of these songs contain orchestral backing that provides a strong connection to the underscore cues, courtesy of common orchestration by Silvestri regulars William Ross and Conrad Pope. As such, the score tracks in The Polar Express maintain the same general tone as the songs, not to mention their constructs nearly the entire time as well. Silvestri wrote about half an hour of strictly orchestral material for the film, and it would not be surprising to learn that a tally of all the songs' melodies occupy about 25 of those minutes, if not more. Never are these themes dramatically altered, their development stagnant from start to finish.

On the commercial album for The Polar Express, Silvestri summarizes four of the songs in "Suite from The Polar Express," a piece that doesn't provide any unique thematic material of the score's own. That product contains only one true score piece, "Seeing is Believing," and this cue gives the listener a few moments with Silvestri's original mystery theme before heading off to quote passages from several famous Christmas carols. This theme of mystery, highlighted by deep male voices and whimsical xylophone, best accompanies the score cue "Do You Believe in Ghosts?" in the film and on the various promotional and bootlegged albums that exist for The Polar Express. Also of possible note from the actual score are the sometimes lengthy recordings of standard Silvestri action tones in "Approaching Flat Top Tunnel" and "On the Ice," though the composer never whips the ensemble into the kind of convincing and satisfying frenzy heard earlier in the year in Van Helsing. Lengthy sequences of the lighter songs' melodies exist in the substantial cues "Meeting Santa Claus" and "The Ride Home," quoting "Believe" and "Spirit of the Season" liberally and often pausing for extended moments of quietly alternating high choral beauty reminiscent of the previously mentioned Elfman classic. Silvestri didn't have much latitude when working on this score, obviously, for there's only so much in terms of instrumentation and structure that you can do with this topic. He resorts to the usual tambourines, bells, chimes, and other expected sounds frequently, and this constantly upbeat holiday spirit does become tiresome after a while. The album situation for The Polar Express is somewhat complicated, though a hard limit on the amount of music recorded for the film does simplify matters. The commercial album contains only a few minutes of Silvestri's own score material not connected to the songs. Released a month later was a Warner Brothers "For Your Consideration" promotional album featuring five untitled tracks amounting to 27 minutes. Fans eventually took the two albums and combined them to form "complete" bootlegs, some featuring an alternate edit of the suite heard on the commercial product. The promotional score material is adequate at every moment, but, like the film, doesn't really live up to the hype. Silvestri and Ballard deserved their paychecks for their work here, but it's naggingly derivative and was unable to expand itself beyond the constraints of the genre and season. "Ho ho ho" thus becomes "ho-hum."  ***   @Amazon.com: CD or Download