Funny / The Polar Express

"CARIBOU CROSSING!?"

• Pretty much everything that Know-It-All says, thanks to Eddie Deezen being able to make anything sound funny with his voice (and sounding just like Mandark, upping the humorously annoying factor).
  • First off:
    Know-it-All Boy: It was five minutes to midnight four minutes ago.
    Conductor: Exactly!
  • And the payoff:
    Hero Girl: It's still 5 minutes to 12!
    Know-it-all Boy: It's been 5 minutes to 12 for the past hour!
  • Let's get one more of him in there:
    Know-It-All (Reading the word punched on his ticket with his thumb over one letter): "Lean?" Whatever that's supposed to mean.
    Conductor (Examining the ticket): "Lean" is spelled with four letters. I believe I punched five.
    (Hands it back)
    Know-It-All: Hey, are you sayin' I don't know how to...(Reads it again and looks back sheepishly) Oh. I'm sorry. It says "Learn". My mistake.
    (Boards train)
    Conductor (To himself): Lesson learned.
• When the Hero Boy meets the Hobo on the train, he offers him a "nice hot cup of Joe". As the boy drinks it, he sees the hobo takes his socks out of the coffee pot, prompting the boy to spit it out immediately.
• A blink-and-you-miss-it one. As Hero Boy and Hero Girl are having their goodbye hug, the conductor comes back and sees, quickly looks away, then checks his pocket watch and makes an exasperated face that just screams "Get on with it!"
• Hero Boy telling the hobo that he's "looking for a girl." The hobo howls with laughter and replies "Ain't we all??"
• When the conductor takes off his hat revealing a bald top, thus eliminating any exact likeness to Tom Hanks.
• The entirety of the caribou crossing sequence.
• In his note to Hero Boy explaining that he found the bell in the sleigh, Santa advises him to get his bathrobe's pocket fixed.
• One of the leader elves calls another "meshuggener" over his choice of wrapping. Given the Yiddish roots of the term, its rather Hilarious in Hindsight that a Christmas elf of all people would be using this term.
• The naughty kid Steven. What takes the cake is the video of him saying "I didn't do it!" being repeated nonstop.
• A Freeze-Frame Bonus moment: when the Conductor is talking about the Flying Elves, one of the children can be seen saluting them.
• When the Hero Boy first asks the Conductor where they're going, the latter answers with the iconic line, "Why to the North Pole, of course! This is the Polar Express!" When the train picks up Billy later on, we hear the Conductor exclaiming the phrase to him (in the exact same way, mind you), implying that he just says this to every kid who asks him about the destination.
• So how does the Polar Express give out refreshments? By floorshow.
• The engineers' desperate struggle for the cotter pin needed for the brakes. After they lose it, the bearded engineer takes off his hat to reveal that not only does he have a spare he uses for a hair pin, but he has a lot of hair.
• Despite the seriousness of the situation, the scene when the pin breaks from the throttle. The driver, Steamer, pulls it back to slow the train down, but notices something is wrong. He pulls it back a couple more times, to no avail. Finally, he starts yanking on the throttle repeatedly, and we see the pin coming loose. And then we get this bit of dialogue
  (Outside on the front of the Polar Express, everyone is noticing the speed.)
  Hero Boy/Chris: We're going pretty fast.
  Conductor: (To Hero Girl) Tell the engineer to slow down.
  (Hero Girl proceeds to climb the steps and face the cabin to speak to them.)
  Hero Girl/Holly: Slow it down! WATCH THE SPEED!
  (Back inside the cabin, Steamer is still tugging on the throttle, before it finally breaks and the pin flies out, causing him to fall out of his seat.
  Steamer: Aaah! Jumping jeepers! The cotter pin sheared off!
  Smokey: What?
  Steamer: The pin!
  Smokey: Where?
  Steamer and Smokey: THERE!
  (Steamer bangs on the floor of the cabin, causing the pin to go flying and into the vent.)
  Steamer and Smokey: Oh no!

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