Plot: After enjoying another awesome Christmas, Timmy wishes it could be Christmas every day. His fairy godparents grant him his wish, and he enjoys toys and time with his family for weeks to come. Too much of a good thing is never a bad thing……right?
Breakdown: There aren’t many Christmas specials that I would say are better enjoyed after Christmas is already over, but if there’s one that makes that list, it’s this episode.
So many Christmas specials leave you wishing that Christmas came every day, but it’s really not a great idea. Eventually, you will get sick of it because one of the reasons amazing things like Christmas are so special is because they only come once a year. If you had it all year round, you wouldn’t appreciate it anymore.
I mentioned this episode in the Stuck on Christmas segment in my Mickey’s Once Upon a Christmas review. In that segment, the only ones aware that Christmas was repeating itself were Huey, Dewey and Louie. Donald, Daisy, Gertie and Scrooge were none the wiser, making it have a Groundhog’s Day effect. In that version, it would be damn near hell because you’d be hearing the exact same words and experiencing the exact same events over and over and over.
I find this version of the setup to be more interesting because everyone’s cognizant of what’s happening. It’s not a matter of reliving the same day – it’s reliving the same holiday, which I find to be more complex and open to a wider range of possibilities.
I also find Timmy’s reasons for wishing such a thing to be better than Huey, Dewey and Louie’s. While Timmy obviously wants to bathe in gifts day after day, the main reason he wants it to be Christmas every day is because his parents stay at home with him instead of being away at work. For the three ducks, all they want are gifts and Christmas dinner.
But away from the comparisons, we still have a very original and interesting interpretation of what would happen when wishing such a thing in this universe. After a while, everyone starts to get sick of the carols, dinners and basically everything Christmassy. They get so sick of Christmas every day that when they spot Santa in the sky, they try to shoot down his sleigh.
Businesses and schools remain closed, meaning people can’t buy anything or get anything done. (Plus, I assume, people would eventually lose their jobs and society would collapse…)
Not even the kids make off well for long since everyone starts getting fewer and fewer gifts each day.
After a while, Timmy finally realizes that Christmas every day wasn’t a good idea after all and that everyone’s had enough, so he wishes for Christmas to be over. However, as we’ve learned is common whenever Timmy makes a bad wish, Cosmo and Wanda can’t reverse it. This time, they simply don’t have the magic for such a thing.
Every year on Christmas, the fairies all lend their magic to Santa so he can be the one to grant the various wishes of the children on Christmas. They get their magic back the day after Christmas, which creates the obvious problem. They can still do minor things like disguise themselves and poof places, but they’re ultimately powerless to make such a big wish.
However, I don’t quite get this. Timmy made this wish on Christmas night – meaning Cosmo and Wanda shouldn’t have had the magic to make the wish come true in the first place.
Another interesting repercussion of Christmas happening every day is that the other holidays can’t occur – meaning the representatives of those holidays are extremely angry. Not only do they already feel inferior to Christmas and Santa, but now Christmas has stolen whatever enjoyment they got from people celebrating their holidays.
They want to take Santa down by transferring his powers to them with the unwilling help of Cosmo and Wanda. After they do so, they plan on sending Santa to the imaginary date of February 33rd.
Meanwhile, Timmy snowmobiles to the north pole with the help of every Christmas-celebrating kid with internet access across the globe. When he arrives, the kids all follow to help save Santa.
Santa is extremely overworked and running out of presents to give the kids since he can’t make enough toys every single day to meet demand. Even with magic, he won’t be able to do anything if this continues.
The main confrontation is really my only major negative point about this episode. The other holidays very nearly succeed in taking over and banishing Santa, but Timmy tries to talk some reason into them. When the army of every web-enabled Christmas-celebrating kid in the world comes, the other holidays can’t find it in them to fight off kids since their main intentions in the first place was to bring their own brand of holiday joy to the kids of the world and be loved.
Timmy says they are loved, just not as much as Santa. He brings them toys, and Christmas brings their families together. The holidays realize he’s right. They all then lament that their holidays are all kinda lame like Easter with eggs that go bad if you don’t find them, April Fools Day with making kids play mean pranks on each other, and Cupid saying Valentines Day makes kids fall in love, which he only realizes is a bad thing when the kids all express disgust.
Understanding that Christmas is just a better holiday and that Santa will always be loved more than them, they decide to let Santa go and reverse everything.
Just….what?
I know the important thing is that they know they’re loved either way, but the fact remains that this started with the other holidays being upset that they were being massively eclipsed by Christmas and Santa. Resolving this plotline by saying ‘Well, yeah, that’s because he’s better than you guys.’ ‘Oh, yeah, you’re right. Guess we better fix everything.’ END. Just seems nonsensical and lazy.
A better option would’ve been to explain the reasons why those holidays are special to the kids too in their own ways. Like Easter is fun for egg hunts and candy, April Fools Day is great to make up creative pranks for everyone to get a laugh, and Valentines day, as much as it makes some kids gag, gives them a bit of courage and hope to make a special connection with someone they like. Maybe say that Christmas may get the most attention, but all holidays have a special place in the hearts of children.
Everything gets changed back to normal, a new rule is made in Da Rules to never allow another kid to wish it were Christmas every day, and, to make it up to Santa, the holidays and Timmy take over delivering presents for next year’s Christmas.
All in all, I still love this Christmas special, even if the climax is a bit poorly written in my opinion. It’s a great way to ease out of Christmas highs as well. I’m sure many people have that same wish when December 26th rolls around, and this is a pretty good way to remind us that special rare events such as Christmas lose their magic and wonder if we live it every single day.
The song in this special is also one of the best Christmas special songs to debut in recent years. ‘I Wish Every Day Could Be Christmas’ is catchy, Christmassy, funny and sweet. I listen to it on a fairly regular basis, and I sing it in the off-season.
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I hope everyone has a happy, safe and wonderful holiday! And for those about to be hit with same storm we are, bundle up, have some cocoa, relax with some Christmas music and curse the people of a utopian future who will never have to shovel.
Plot: The adults are snowed in at a 19th century cabin. The babies are battling in The Nutcracker and trying desperately to make Dil’s first Christmas a good one so he’ll have more Christmases in the future. Angelica is hellbent on getting Santa’s toys all for herself. Is anyone going to have a good Christmas?
Breakdown: This review didn’t need to be two parts, but if they’re going to stretch out the special and yuk out some bonus points, I’m gonna.
This episode starts with five minutes worth of two things – Angelica being a thieving bratty bitch and the babies taking part in a mechanical representation of The Nutcracker.
Angelica grabs an armful of cookies that were meant to be taken one by one by the children listening to the carolers, and they don’t do a damn thing about it. She took all of them yet no one even calls out to her to stop. Someone loses their snow hat in front of her so she just decides it’s hers now, even though that hat shouldn’t really fit her. Then she jumps into a group of carolers singing her rendition of ‘Joy to the World’ where she inserts herself as the main focus of the song. Yes, Angelica is now literally comparing herself to Jesus. Maybe not intentionally, but it’s there.
I don’t understand why she’s screwing around so much. The only reason I can figure is that they want to keep showing Angelica being a witch so we’ll better understand why she’s supposedly not on Santa’s nice list…………………………….but……come on. Even people who have never seen a frame of Rugrats know that Angelica’s one of the most notoriously bratty bully characters to ever be shown in any form of media. She has her moments where she thaws her heart, but there is never any question that she is mostly a terrible and selfish person.
Even so, couldn’t they have put this in the first episode? She sent the babies off on a wild goose chase so she could find Santa’s toys first, yet she’s not even actively looking for them until she runs into the babies again.
Speaking of the babies, there’s not much to say about them for a while. Like I said, they accidentally partake in a mechanical rendition of The Nutcracker and all sorts of shenanigans happen. Some of it’s a little funny, but it’s still mostly padding. There’s also one aspect I don’t understand about it.
They’re first being ‘attacked’ by the Nutcracker and are saved by the Mouse King and his soldiers, but when Kimi decides they should fight too, she immediately decides to kick the crap out of one of the mice soldiers. I know they’re animatronics who aren’t taking sides, but from their perspective, Kimi is beating up someone who just saved them.
I owe you my life, and an asskicking!
Then it turns around and the Mouse King is attacking them, but the Nutcracker saves them and winks at them. I don’t understand.
Once we get to the actual plot, Angelica has an acid trip after she breaks into a fake Santa’s Workshop. Nothing says ‘I deserve presents’ like breaking and entering. She imagines the workshop is real, along with the toy reindeer Santa handed her, named Prancey, and the employee elf from earlier, Hermie, being a real elf. He breaks the news to her that she’s not getting any presents since she’s not on the nice list and even Prancey abandons her after she called him a dumb toy.
We get an alright, but incredibly forgettable song called ‘Treat Each Day Like Christmas (And Your World’s a Holiday)’ where Angelica learns to not be a bitch, I guess. The problem I have with this song is that it’s not really treating Angelica to be a better person on the grounds of just being a better person – it’s basically telling her to be a better person or you end up with no presents. Which is already pretty pointless because she already did get a present – the aforementioned reindeer doll, Prancey. She didn’t like it at first, but obviously grew to like it. So, yes, if you’re a bratty little sack of reindeer crap, you do indeed get presents. Maybe not the one you wanted, but it’s far better than–
Hermie: “We give the good kids lots of toys and give the bad ones lice!”
Yeah, lice……Wait, what?
Prancey is adorable, though….Man, I’m sure on a reindeer cuteness kick lately.
Plus, she’s guaranteed to get a bunch of stuff ‘from Santa’ from her parents.
Back with the adults, their plot literally resolves itself off-screen. They’re still trapped, but they learned to stop fighting, stop being angry about missing Christmas with the kids, stop worrying that they’re going to die from lack of oxygen, enjoy the rustic charm of the cabin, focus less on the Mega Corp stuff and commercialism of Christmas and have a nice Christmas together all doing various things like baking, making popcorn garland, decorating the tree and doing origami…..off-screen. Too bad every single scene in these two episodes has been everything but padding or else they could’ve had time to show all that.
They seem like they might get back to being Christmas grumps when Chas accidentally sets off the sprinkler system and soaks everyone and everything, but, like before, when they return to the scene later, everything is mostly dry and they’re right back to singing carols and enjoying the holiday. They keep cutting out the most important parts of this subplot. It’s driving me nuts.
In the actual plot for the babies, they’re lead by a goat to a nativity scene, which in my opinion, is pretty much the only part of this special worth its salt. The babies all feel bad for the baby Jesus because he looks cold and itchy, barely clothed in a bed of hay. Though I don’t know why they’re not questioning why this baby is sleeping with his eyes wide open and isn’t moving at all.
Baby Jesus went on to become a wonderful mime.
They believe Mary, Joseph and the wise men are all hoping the baby has a good first Christmas or else he won’t get any others, like Dil. In an effort to give him some semblance of a good first Christmas, they give the baby Jesus the special Christmas gifts they got from the Nutcracker battle. As soon as I saw they kept those things, I knew they’d reincorporate them, but the way they went about getting them and the fact that the items are totally random pieces of trash makes it seem like this was thrown together sloppily.
Lil gives her ribbon that she got from a ballerina robot, Phil gives a shoe that he took from that same robot, Chuckie gives the big walnut he got from the Nutcracker, Kimi gives a bell she got from the Mouse King and even Dil gives the hat that he got when it flew off of Angelica’s head (the same one she essentially stole).
Then the Jesus doll smiles.
……This is meant to be really cute and endearing and everything….but this is kinda creepy. Rugrats is known for the babies taking normal things and perceiving them as living or something else because they have such an active imagination. The Nutcracker battle, for example, kept switching back and forth between watching the robots fight to watching a real battle between mice and nutcrackers.
They’re doing this with the Jesus doll…..but I just can’t shake off the creepy feeling. It’s not like they’re imagining the baby Jesus as a living, breathing baby now, fussing around like Dil does – they’re imagining the same doll just with a smile now. The smiling doll is cute, but the shift is what makes it creepy. It doesn’t even make sense with the way their imaginations work.
I will give this scene major props, though. They manage to make a mostly endearing and adorable scene of pure good will, kindness and charity, involving a nativity scene, and not shoving anything overtly Christmassy or even religious down our throats – and this is coming from a Christian who loves having schmaltzy Christmassy messages shoved down my throat.
With Lou, he takes up the Santa role since the last one quit, and pathetically dresses up for the job with nothing but his regular attire plus a Santa hat and a beard that is way too loose-fitting. It’s hanging so low on his face, it would never fool even the youngest child. He is being a good Santa, though, so I’ll give him that. He hears that six babies are riding a goat to the nativity scene so he rushes out on a sleigh and retrieves them.
Close by, he spots the cabin the others are trapped in. Now that I have seen the exterior, apparently they didn’t bother trying to open the window to climb out despite the fact that the snow barely reaches halfway up the window.
In the end, Chuckie says Dil had a pretty good Christmas with or without presents because they had a lot of fun together. Angelica shows back up and somehow has a sack of gifts despite not being given one at the end of the ‘it totally happened’ acid trip. She kept the elf hat, but there was no sack of gifts. Angelica happily gives the babies their gifts. Chuckie gets a new snowsuit, complete with his trademark Saturn design, because his old one ripped during the Nutcracker battle. Kimi gets a glockenspiel….and she somehow calls it that instead of a xylophone, which is weird.
Yeah, they’re different, but most kids wouldn’t know the difference and much more commonly know the xylophone. How they mutter mispronounced words all the time but she manages to say ‘glockenspiel’ nearly perfectly is almost comical. Phil gets a new pair of snow boots. Lil gets a magic princess wand.
Tommy doesn’t want to open his gift until Dil does (Tommy, you really are the best big brother.) However, there’s, for some reason, nothing for Dil. I’m confused. If this bag is from Santa, there’s no reason why Dil wouldn’t get a gift. His name is even confirmed to be on the list from Angelica’s acid trip. If the bag is just something she put together herself, she wouldn’t say it’s from Santa and would’ve remembered Dil. Unless Santa wanted Angelica to give up her reindeer doll to make her story arc come to a head, I dunno.
Angelica tearfully yet happily gives Dil the doll and then prompts Tommy to open his gift. He says he already got his gift since all he wanted was for Dil to have a good Christmas. Then he offers his gift to Angelica since she doesn’t have a gift (You’re killing me, Tommy.) Angelica rejects it and tells him to open it. It’s a new camera, which may or may not be an intentional nudge at his future film career in All Grown Up. It’s a regular photo camera, not a video camera, so I can’t be certain.
The kids are reunited with their parents, and they spend the rest of Christmas eve hanging out in the cabin.
The end.
———————————-
This special really didn’t need to be two parts, but at least most of part two was pretty good. Most of the plot with the adults didn’t have enough development on screen to have a strong impact, but it got the message across effectively enough.
The storyline with Angelica was poorly handled. Not only does she pull a complete 180 just because a song basically told her to be nice, but she magically gains a sack of toys from nowhere so we can wrap up the plot better. It is implied that the acid trip dream was real since she still had the elf hat and Santa does his tropey fly overhead in the last shot of the episode, but how and why did the warehouse instantly change back and forth to the mechanical representation? Please don’t say ‘magic’.
Like I mentioned, there was never any part where Angelica is handed a sack of toys and told to go deliver them for Santa or even saying ‘You’ll know what to do’. She just gets a sack of toys from nowhere and claims it’s from Santa.
Angelica was being a selfless girl at the end, especially giving up her reindeer for Dil and refusing to accept Tommy’s present as her own, but it loses a bit of its impact when you remember her parents will just shower her with everything she ever dreamed of at home. She doesn’t know that, so maybe it redeems her, but it was still a bit of a sloppy way of quickly changing her ways, which won’t even matter because Angelica is still a huge bitch after this even in All Grown Up.
The plotline with the babies was a good deal of padding, but for the most part the threads of it held together pretty well, even if I think it was also handled a tad sloppily. I did really enjoy the nativity scene…scene. It was definitely the best part of the episode, particularly with how unique it is. I can’t think of any Christmas special that has a scene even remotely similar to that. It was a very sweet and cute segment that didn’t seem forced or preachy. They weren’t even really giving their stuff over because it was Christmas, they legitimately felt bad for the baby.
All in all, this was an enjoyable Christmas special, but nothing fantastic. It had its funny lines and moments, but not enough to truly make the episode a must-watch on Chrsitmas. It also had its touching moments, but only in part two. Tommy in particular is being a big sweetheart.
In all honestly, part two can be watched almost entirely on its own, and it’s instantly made into a much better special. You could easily cut some fat from this and insert some exposition from part one to clean this up. The special is certainly worth watching, but it’s so hard to justify the 44 minute long cumulative runtime.
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Plot: Charlotte has become the new CEO of Megacorp, and Stu has been contracted out to design and build a massive mechanical Christmas wonderland. Everyone is invited to come down on Christmas and enjoy the attractions in a private gathering before the kids are able to meet Santa. However, Angelica’s on a Christmas warpath to meet Santa first and demand all of the good presents before anyone else can get one. Tommy’s more preoccupied with making Dil’s first Christmas a great one, but Angelica tricks them into believing that Dil will never have another good Christmas if he doesn’t get a good present from Santa in his first year. They’re not that worried until Angelica drives Santa into quitting. Is Christmas ruined for everyone?
Breakdown:Babies in Toyland was a special I watched but wasn’t all that interested in. Despite being a Rugrats nut for most of my childhood, I admit, I never got too into the later seasons. Right about when they got a new theme song was when I started to fade out. I believe that was when I started getting more interested in Pokemon and anime as a whole.
Plus, it was getting that ‘we’re clearly running on fumes’ stink. That smell usually comes from the inclusion of many new characters. Dil was an alright addition and gave more depth to Tommy’s character, but he was usually just a plot device or a means to make gross jokes. Kimi was also alright, but really seemed like a female Tommy. They didn’t really utilize her much as a new layer to Chuckie’s character in making him a brother. Kira never added anything to the show besides making Chuckie’s life a little less sad. Spike and Fifi’s puppies nor Lulu also seemed like they added anything worthwhile. Before I rewatched this special, I legit forgot that Lulu even existed.
For some reason, Babies in Toyland is a two-parter Rugrats special, which I can’t make sense of. Rugrats has a decent library of holiday specials, all of which are better than this episode, and all of which are merely one episode (technically two since Rugrats was usually split up into eleven minute segments. Meaning this special is actually taking up four ‘episodes’.) Considering this was right when Rugrats was starting to teeter off in popularity, I have to wonder why they’d give them a two-part Christmas special.
The only way I can figure it is that they knew the holiday specials were some of the most well-received episodes of Rugrats. In an effort to get more steam out of them, they stretched what would’ve easily been a singular episode special into two parts.
Let me highlight one of the biggest reasons why this doesn’t work as a two-parter. The to-be-continued cliffhanger is the babies approaching a giant nutcracker……..that’s it. They closeup on the nutcracker’s face, it’s not moving or doing anything…..and bam ‘to be continued’
The setup here is a bit interesting because it’s almost like they’re about to make this one of Stu’s big screwups on steroids. They’re surrounded by things he’s invented and, if you know Rugrats, you know it basically means they’re in a death trap. How the hell a multi-billion dollar corporation like Mega Corp hired a man like Stu in the first place is beyond me. They show that he literally holds parts of his machine together with paper clips, and should even one of said paper clips fail, the control panel bursts into sparks and causes a blizzard that could kill the people in Christmas Land in a matter of moments.
This wouldn’t be a big issue since most adults would just leave, but remember, this is Rugrats, meaning these dumbass idiots are always letting their babies run loose or leaving them with Grandpa Lou, who I’m starting to believe has baby-induced narcolepsy at this point. He obviously falls asleep, allowing the babies to escape, and when he wakes up he believes Lulu (his new wife) took the kids and left him hot cocoa, despite the fact that she went on the train with the others, no one else is seen returning, she didn’t leave a note or anything. The babies could be kidnapped and he’d be none the wiser.
Angelica is notorious for being one of the biggest animated bitches this side of media, but she seems like she’s turning up the obnoxious evil bitchery up in this episode. Being all pushy about seeing Santa and hilariously acting like she deserves all the best presents because she’s “worked so hard at being good this year” is one thing, but lying like that to Tommy and the others about Dil was just evil for no reason. Angelica usually lied to the babies because it would benefit her in some way. Sometimes she was a bitch for the sake of being a bitch, but she mostly used her lies to manipulate the babies into either doing her bidding or getting her something.
I do find it funny that Angelica’s such an irritating slab of brat that she makes Santa of all people quit, but I think it would’ve been much funnier if the Santa was real. That doesn’t really mesh with the Rugrats universe, but it definitely would’ve been funnier. Plus, when they’re adding, in canon, a giant robot dinosaur being piloted by babies having a battle in a Japanese-themed theme park in France against a giant robot snail being piloted by a Frenchman, I think we can justify squeezing real Santa in there.
There’s a subplot with the other adults that I don’t really care about. They visit some historically accurate cabin with animatronics (Yeah, that doesn’t make sense) and get snowed in by a blizzard caused by Stu and his dumb paper clips. The snow reaches six feet deep in about an hour, meaning if the babies were in the area they’d be long since dead by now. Good job, guys.
Lulu loves the cabin, but everyone else is bored or bickering.
In the end, the babies and Angelica, devastated that Santa quit, decide to look for the stash of Santa’s toys so Angelica can bathe in things she doesn’t deserve and Tommy can get Dil a good present for his first Christmas.
Despite not being terribly funny or even all that interesting, and clearly being stretched into a two-parter, there were some highlights. I love Tommy in this because he’s such a great big brother. He doesn’t care at all that he won’t get presents this year – he just wants a present for Dil to ensure all of his future Christmases are good. I liked that Chuckie offered to give Dil his blocks and pretend they were from Santa. That just shows what an awesome friend and person Chuckie is. I also liked one line from Phil where he suggests bringing Angelica back a witch’s broom as a present.
May I ask one final question before we get to the second part? The babies have now been through several holiday specials…….how old are they now? Tommy should be at least three by now, same with Phil and Lil, Chuckie should be like five, Angelica should be six and Dil should be less annoying….Seriously, why is Dil not at least conversing with the other babies by now? At any rate, they should definitely be older than they are now.
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Plot: Rudolph the red-nosed—oops, sorry. Felt like I was stuck in a loop there for a minute. Santa, feeling like the Christmas cheer and good will no longer exists, decides to spend this Christmas nursing his aching body and resting rather than going to deliver presents. Will a Christmas without Santa be no Christmas at all?
Breakdown: …..Mmm.
After trudging through those two GoodTimes Rudolph specials, I felt we needed a return to form. A nice review of a good Rankin/Bass Christmas special is what we need to get our Christmas spirit back.
The Year Without a Santa Claus is a special I usually watch every year, at least when I see it on, but it’s not on my absolutely must-watch list. Still, I’ve watched it since I was young and have a nostalgic love for it.
Well, it’s been a couple of years since my last viewing, and, for some reason, this was one of those moments where I rewatch a special with a critical eye and end up not being sure of where I stand with it anymore.
The plot is solid enough, though questionable. Santa feels like no one appreciates Christmas or him anymore so he feels fully justified in taking the year off to nurse a cold he’s having. Sick Santa I can deal with, but the only reason he really feels like no one appreciates him or Christmas anymore is because some grumpy doctor started an impromptu rant session about how Christmas sucks, and Santa was surprisingly swayed by this argument.
The only reason I have an issue with this is because it seems out of left field without some event providing support for Santa changing his mind about this outside of ‘Yeah, he’s right.’ Maybe preface the movie with last year and how the letters were more selfish or demanding or picky. Have him seeing more bad behavior and whatnot over the course of the year. Don’t just suddenly flip a ‘Yeah, kids are little brats’ switch, especially from a character who never appears again.
What’s weird is how the people react to this. First of all, they somehow caught wind of the story that Santa’s taking the year off almost immediately after he makes the decision. This means that, not only do the people supposedly have proof that Santa’s real, but they also have a person on the inside feeding them gossip.
Second, despite part of a following song showing the kids deeply saddened by this news and even believing Santa to be dead, soon after the end of the song, we see a group of kids who all collectively give zero shits that Santa’s not coming for Christmas AND…..we learn that they don’t believe in Santa.
We all asked to be more contradictory for Christmas.
Uh….what? How do you go from stopping two people talking about Santa by saying Santa’s taking the year off to saying you don’t believe in him? How do you mourn the loss of Santa and then not believe in him? How do you have newspaper headlines about Santa with PHOTOS OF SANTA AND MRS. CLAUS and then not believe in Santa?
It’s really surprising that people really don’t seem to care that Santa’s not coming. Even if people have lost their Christmas cheer and good will, surely they’d be sad or angry about missing out on presents.
Another odd thing about the story is that it seems slightly disjointed. At the beginning, you’re kinda tricked into believing that Mrs. Claus might go out and do Santa’s job behind his back, which is actually a very interesting idea considering Mrs. Claus hardly ever gets to do anything outside of cater to Santa’s every whim. But then they scrap the idea after a musical number.
It’s also a bit weird that the song Mrs. Claus sings about being Santa includes lines like “anyone can be Santa.” The guy feels like no one appreciates him, so straight out say that he’s easily replaceable.
Mrs. C, rocking the red coat.
Mrs. Claus sends out two elves, Jingle and Jangle, along with the most adorable reindeer ever, baby Vixen, down to earth to see if they can get some proof that Christmas cheer and good will is still alive and well in the hearts of the people.
Vixen, who has been dressed up as a dog (adorable!) gets sick from the hot weather in Southtown and is caught by a dog catcher. They try to free Vixen by talking to the Mayor, only to get shot down. The only way he’ll free Vixen is if they prove their Santa story by making it snow in Southtown, where it never snows.
They recruit Mrs. Claus and a kid they met, Iggy, to help them by talking to Snowmeiser, the creator of ice and snow and master of the north. They have to deal with the bickering of Snowmeiser and Heatmeiser in order to get it to snow in Southtown, so they decide to go to their mother, Mother Nature, to sort everything out. Snowmeiser makes it snow in Southtown while Heatmeiser agrees to not melt the snow and gets to bring summer time weather to the north pole – successfully confirming global warming and drowning Florida.
We hate each other but sing songs that are virtually identical barring some details and have a direct line to each others lairs with giant video screens.
Might I add that I love how Mrs. Claus and the others patiently wait as Snow and Heatmeiser finish their unprompted song numbers about themselves?
Meanwhile, Santa heads down to earth after figuring out what Jingle and Jangle were up to and meets Iggy, who was one of the kids who lost his faith in Santa and didn’t care that he was taking a vacation. Santa and his parents convince him otherwise with a very touching song. Santa goes off to free Vixen so he can take her back to the north pole, which he does, without the knowledge of Jingle, Jangle, Iggy or Mrs. Claus.
Despite the snow now being unnecessary for Vixen’s release, there was another condition of the agreement – giving Santa an official holiday so he can have a vacation. Just to keep score, Santa now has two official holidays……
Santa is happy that he gets to rest and relax on Christmas, but after a couple of days of rest, he realizes he’s making a big mistake. He gets sent a bunch of presents from the kids on Christmas eve, and he gets letters that show how much he’ll be missed on Christmas day.
Guilt-ridden, Santa decides to make the flight and even publicly flies around greeting the townsfolk. Christmas is saved, hooray!
While Rankin/Bass specials are no stranger to odd additions to their films, the side-plot with Snowmeiser and Heatmeiser seems so out of place that it feels like it belongs in another movie.
Don’t get me wrong, I really like Snow and Heatmeiser (Snow’s better, but maybe I’m biased, being from the north), they have some funny interactions, very catchy songs and good dialogue, but I can’t help feeling like the plot of the snow could’ve been done better without them.
I actually wish this movie had been more down to earth. Maybe had Santa have a bad couple of years or something and send him down to earth on the off-season to see how much Christmas spirit is truly alive in the hearts of the people himself instead of sending Jingle and Jangle off to do it. That song that Santa sings really seems like it belongs in the third act of such a movie instead of the second act of this one.
And, really, what did Jingle and Jangle do that helped Santa recognize the Christmas spirit in others? They, or mostly Mrs. Claus, got snow in Southtown, but it’s not like the rest of the residents knew that was a sign of Santa….In fact, it really wasn’t, because he didn’t make it snow – the meiser brothers did.
Wait, what about the menagerie breaking loose?
It appears as though Iggy changing his mind about it prompted everyone else to start doing the same, even if he never shared these opinions with anyone else outside of his parents.
I will admit, the kids making presents for Santa on Christmas was really sweet. You never think of giving Santa anything but milk, cookies, and a higher risk of diabetes. However, it’s still bugging me that Christmas spirit is waning when they have solid proof that he exists, no matter how many aliases him and his associates use (such as the ever clever “Mr. Claus” (Pronounced “kl-ow-s.”). The fact that he feels free to fly around town, even landing and walking around to talk to people and wave to them, is also very strange. Santa could’ve solved all of his problems if he just did that to begin with if Christmas spirit works that way.
The wonder and magic of Christmas where Santa is involved is in the belief that he exists. Hearing reindeer hooves on the roof, seeing a puff of soot fall from the chimney in the dead of night, seeing the empty plate of cookies and glass of milk etc. I’m almost jealous of kids who still believe in Santa because I never really got to experience that level of belief in something so magical. I don’t really know why – I just never believed in him.
It’s all the more confusing when ‘Santa Claus Comes Tonight’ plays and you see Iggy hiding under his covers to not see Santa….spliced in with Santa flying around town, waving to people like he’s in a parade.
Another thing I have to point out about this movie is the animation. I already addressed the ‘stop motion is creepy, and Rankin/Bass productions are no exception’ thing, but I have never been more aware that I’m watching animated dolls while watching one of these movies. I don’t know if it’s the lighting or the fact that this special is so much more focused on human characters, but every scene screams ‘dolls’ and ‘stop motion’, which is indeed very weird of me to note considering this is stop motion with dolls, but let me explain.
When Rankin/Bass does specials with non-human characters, it’s much easier to get immersed in the environment and forget that these are models, puppets and dolls being animated, no matter how creepy or obvious the animation is. When you have nearly everyone in the special being human, it somehow breaks the immersion much more and makes the animation quirks even more apparent. It’s not necessarily bad, it just takes you out of the full experience a bit.
Look at Vixen, though! ❤
Where does that leave this special as a whole, though? Well, it has some very great and memorable songs that I would say are even better than the songs in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. That song about Santa is heartstring tugger all the way. I like the idea of the plot, Mrs. Claus, the meiser brothers and the adorable little baby Vixen, but I really feel like the execution could’ve been better. The set up is also pretty flimsy without stronger support as to why Santa suddenly feels this way.
Do I even need to bring up one of the most common criticisms of Santa? Dude, you work one day a year, but you need a damn vacation? I’m aware that he still has a cold and doesn’t do this for any compensation, but it’s still just one day a year.
Do his elves get any days off? I doubt it. They work their asses off all year trying to make toys for millions of kids, probably even through illness, yet they get no respect from the children of the world and no compensation to speak of outside of maybe a place to live. I can even bet they’re back to work on Christmas day to get the jump on next year.
All in all, I still very much enjoyed this special no matter the qualms I have with it. It’s sweet, humorous and definitely has its heart in the right place. I’m still not sure this is an unmissable Christmas tradition, but I would understand if it was or became as such. Like many of Rankin/Bass’s works, it just has a certain charm and warmth about it that you just don’t get today.
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Plot: Rudolph the plot you already know. I know that you’ve heard the song. And if you haven’t by now, I’m gonna break your knees with tongs. All of the other reviews have this same redundant joke. I can’t think of anything clever, so sit back and drink a coke!
Breakdown: Hey, 2001! You’re looking awful down in the dumps.
2001: “Well….yeah, it’s…been a rough year.”
That’s a shame. Hey! I know what you need! Some Christmas cheer!
2001: “That might help, actually.”
A day before Halloween!
2001: “Er…Okay.”
You relax, and I’ll whip up a nice movie. Hey, do you remember Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer?
2001: “Yeah, of course! That’s a Christmas classic!”
Good! You sit tight and I’ll whip a sequel!
2001: “That grea—what?”
A sequel!
2001: “A sequel to a stop-motion Christmas special made in 1964?”
Yuppers!
2001: “Wait, are you sure you’re not confusing this as a sequel of the 1998 movie?”
Nope. Same company – different continuity!
2001: “How does that even happen?”
Don’t worry. We’ll make it in some of the worst CGI we can create, rip off the character designs just to hook in nostalgia whores and fill it with B-list celebrities!
2001: “What the—that sounds terrible…..Wait. I know you! 1998 warned me about you!”
And you wanna know something else?
2001: “He said something about a poorly animated retelling of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and saying I’d have it worse.”
Rick Moranis, who himself proclaimed he was not retired but was ‘picky’ about what movies he’d be in, chose this as his first movie to perform in after his hiatus in 1997.
2001: “Is that good?”
Not really! 😀
2001: “That poor man.”
I’m done!
2001: “What—you made the movie already?”
Sure thing!
2001: “How?”
I’m a demon from the future!
2001: “I actually believe you….”
Wanna watch?!
2001: “Not partic–”
It’s Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and the Island of Misfit Toys!
We start off with the song because of course we are, but, interestingly, the elves are ‘singing’ it (A unlisted singer is actually singing it, but in the scene the elves are meant to be singing it)…right in front of the other reindeer…and Rudolph. Just seems a bit awkward to go “You know Dasher and Dancer, and Prancer and Vixen, Comet and Cupid, Donner and Blitzen, but do you recall the most famous reindeer of all?” as we pan over all of the reindeer.
Like, yeah, thanks for reminding us that we’re not as special as Rudolph. And why do you not question if everyone knows us but you question if they recall the most famous reindeer of all? Do you not know what famous means? At least one of us always gets forgotten when most people recite the song. You don’t see people going ‘Uh, is it Ralph the Red-Nosed Reindeer?’
What’s even weirder is that the animators remembered to put Comet in his signature coaching hat, but forgot to color or design Donner any differently than the other reindeer. I know I don’t like Rankin/Bass Donner, but he’s Rudolph’s dad, at least change his coloring a bit.
Then you include the guilt-trip part of the song “All of the other reindeer used to laugh and call him names. They never let poor Rudolph join in any reindeer games.”
And I don’t know about anyone else, but wouldn’t you feel awkward if you were Rudolph? I don’t like being sung to as it is, but if someone’s literally singing my praises, especially above others, I think I’d feel really embarrassed.
This rendition of the song, by the way, is one of the most boring renditions of it I’ve ever heard. Like a good chunk of the music in the movie, the melody sounds like it’s being done on an old Casio, and like they’re actively trying not to make it sound fun.
They light the Christmas tree, but it trips the breaker. Santa uses Rudolph’s nose to light the way to the basement so he can reset the breaker and start the lights back up. That scene literally had no other purpose whatsoever other than to remind us that Rudolph’s nose can be useful. No flashlights anywhere, Santa? Not even a lantern?
The movie, like the original, is being narrated to us by a snowman. But instead of Sam the Snowman, voiced by the late Burl Ives, we’ve got Scoop T. Snowman, voiced by Richard Dreyfuss. His design is nightmare inducing, and he spoils the movie at the very start by telling us that he’ll tell us the story of how Rudolph and his friends defeated the evil Toy Taker and saved Christmas.
But forget nightmare snowman – we’ve still got Bumble around! And boy howdy this CGI is not doing his character design any favors. Have you ever seen those production error versions of Sully from Monsters Inc.? They seem to have kidnapped that for this design. Seriously, guys, if you can’t do long fur, don’t try. It’s like he’s been stabbed with a million white wires.
How is it possible to make Bumble’s design even more frightening?
At least his deafening screech is gone – replaced by what I can only so lovingly refer to as a complete moron voice. Lots of ‘Duhh’s and ‘Gaah’s and whatnot.
Yukon is also here, sticking his dirty pickaxe in the eggnog and licking it. Mmm sanitary.
Something you’ll notice about Rudolph almost immediately is that he no longer has proper adult antlers. He has very small antlers like a spike now. I have no clue why. This movie is supposed to be a direct sequel to the Rankin/Bass special, meaning he should still be an adult. If we want to apply real reindeer logic to this, reindeer do shed their antlers and regrow them, but male reindeer do this in winter or spring, meaning Rudolph’s head should either be bare (winter) or be fully back by now (spring).
Then again, if we’re applying real reindeer logic here, Clarice should also have antlers since most female reindeer have antlers. In fact, there’s a theory that Santa’s reindeer are actually females because females shed their antlers in summer and have them fully grown back by winter, which is when most males lose their antlers…….So I’m stalling. Sue me. The next scene has a song break, have some mercy.
The song break in question is a brief love song for Rudolph and Clarice called ‘Beyond the Stars.’ It is probably one of the most generic love songs I’ve ever heard – loaded with every love song keyword you can think of. And what better way to end the segment than cutting to another scene while the song is still going and said scene including a nightmare fuel kite with a face?
Rudolph is feeling sad because now he’s sick of the attention he’s been getting – mostly because now everyone’s focusing on his ‘heroics’ instead of letting him be a normal reindeer like he wanted in the first place. They even make him do tricks with his nose, like shining his light on the disco ball. Also, apparently now Rudolph’s nose can be focused beams of differing size. Earlier, it was like a flashlight and now it’s like a laser beam.
So now Rudolph’s back to calling himself a misfit and whining for a normal nose. Congratulations! You’ve now nullified the message of the previous movie! WHOO!
But don’t worry – over the course of a song break, ‘We’re Perfectly Fine,’ Rudolph’s happy again. The song’s chorus melody is catchy, but the rest of it is just difficult to listen to. Rudolph and Hermey keep singing over each other, and the melody gets too muddled.
Also, the ending is incredibly jarring. One second they’re on an iceberg nowhere near the toothmobile, the next millisecond after the last note of the song we see them closeup having a conversation in the toothmobile.
Hermey and Rudolph were alerted by a kite that King Moonracer is in desperate need of a dentist, so they’re traveling to the Island of Misfit Toys to treat him.
We get another song break, because it’s been all of a minute and half since the last one, explaining the Island of Misfit Toys, which is pointless because we should already know that, and the previous movie had a song about it. For anyone about to bring up the time gap between the release date of the first movie and this one, remember, the writers expect you to not ask who the burly mountaineer who licks his pickaxe and the yeti with no teeth are.
This song, ‘The Island of Misfit Toys,’ is just terrible. It’s infuriatingly annoying, especially the chorus. If it went on for any longer, I was going to start chewing on my computer screen.
Also, there’s ANOTHER Jack in the box who’s not named Jack and ANOTHER train with square wheels. If I’m not going to bring up the continuity thing, I’ll just have to chalk this up to pure laziness.
We get a joke that actually works pretty well when we see one of the misfit toys is a depressed phone who keeps getting people calling only to have them hang up. Kite says “He’s a telephone with hangups.” I almost legit cracked a smile at that one.
Despite the song explaining what’s wrong with these toys, we then get a scene with the toys explaining what’s wrong with them. I will give this movie one thing, though. These misfit toys have far more significant problems than the toys from the last movie. A piggy bank with no coin slot, a kite that’s afraid of heights, a phone that keeps dropping calls, a boomerang that won’t come back, binoculars that can’t see well, a bouncy ball that doesn’t bounce (though I’m convinced they just didn’t want to go to the trouble of making a decent bouncing animation) and a plane that keeps nosediving. It’s way worse than a doll with no issues, a polka dotted elephant and a cowboy on an ostrich.
Oh my god, Moonracer, what did they do to your voice and character? You went from majestic and powerful to whiny little bitch boy. GoodTimes Entertainment, thou hast sinned a mighty sin!
Hermey doesn’t seem to have gotten any better at dentistry because he’s using the same dental practices he used on the doll in the last movie – IE, hit their teeth with something – that’ll help. Moonracer needs a root canal, and if you’re worried about your kids being scared of the dentist, just show them Hermey with a drill twice as big as he is, shaking around like crazy as an auto-mechanic’s air compressor drill sound effect plays.
Back at Santa’s workshop, knowing the Toy Taker is wreaking havoc, Santa locks up the toy warehouse good and tight and puts his toy soldiers on high alert. But before they even get done with a quarter of the scene, you realize they’re just going to come in that giant unnecessary glass ceiling they have. And they do……but not by breaking it. There’s a door on the damn glass ceiling that seems to open automatically when something’s close to it.
But enough of Santa’s toys getting stolen, let’s have Hermey have a flashback to something that makes no goddamn sense whatsoever. As Hermey chats up Rudolph about him and Clarice, he decides to share a tale of love from his past. He talks about graduating from the Elf Academy of Dental Arts.
…..Yup…..The ELF ACADEMY OF DENTAL ARTS…….Did they not see the last movie? Hermey was a misfit because he was an elf who wanted to be a dentist, and that seemed ridiculous to everyone because elves are damned to be toymakers and dentists aren’t a thing there. I get that his desires were accepted by the end of the movie, but it hasn’t even been a full year since the last movie. You’re telling me, in that time, not only was there an Elf Academy for the Dental Arts created, built and fully established, but that there was actually enough interest in the elf community to warrant such a thing? The graduating class is pretty sizable, too. Who’s even teaching there?
….And what the hell are ‘dental arts’? That sounds horrifying!
Anyway, Hermey was handed his diploma by the tooth fairy, which makes a lot of sense, actually, and he fainted. End of flashback, no not kidding. The scene literally lasts 25 seconds.
I would say the tooth fairy’s the only teacher, but it seems like that’s the first time he’s ever seen her.
Hermey and Rudolph are now caught in a terrible storm. They hit an iceberg, causing it to crumble, and supposedly sinking the truck/boat thing. The animation on the iceberg falling apart is not just terrible, horrible or disgusting. It’s terrihorgusting. I had to pause the video because I was so baffled by how horribly animated it was. They weren’t even trying.
They’re alright, however, because flying reindeer. This triumphant moment is accompanied by one of the most awkward synthesized trumpet ‘renditions’ of ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’ to ever be conceived.
They land on Castaway Cove, which is guarded by gingerbread men dressed as toy soldiers……Okay.
The soldier brings the boys into a giant elegant castle filled with living gingerbreadmen (and women) to meet Queen Camilla – a flying hippo wearing a feather boa. I feel I should question this more, but we also have an island ruled by a flying lion, inhabited by factory reject toys.
She won’t listen to what they have to say and believes they’re there to steal her toys.
Queen Camilla: “Quiet, before I mount you over that mantle!” Ya know, between us not knowing what kind of toys she’s talking about and that line, I feel like I should be more concerned.
She wants them sent to the dungeons for 300 years.
Rudolph: “But he’s a dentist!”
Hermey: “And he’s a beloved holiday icon!”
Two jokes that work! Good job!
The guards try to wrangle the boys, and it’s taking them way too long to combat gingerbread cookies. I don’t want to be morbid, but Rudolph, have a snack.
They all stop when Rudolph’s nose starts shining, making them realize he’s Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer….Uh….you couldn’t tell from the fact that he’s a reindeer with a red freakin’ nose? Even if it’s not lit, it’s still a red nose.
Camilla says Castaway Cove is a place for broken, discarded toys to come for rest, relaxation and rejuvenation- basically just a slightly reworked version of the Island of Misfit Toys. Actually, scratch that, this place is better than the Island of Misfit Toys. These toys live in the lap of luxury. Last we saw, the toys on the island were little more than homeless. They’re almost always outside, and we’ve only ever seen one house there besides the castle. Plus, one of the last scenes of the original movie had the toys huddling around a fire trying to stay warm during the storm.
This information is being given to us in a lounge act type song sung by Camilla, complete with an embarrassingly horrible reflection animation in the mirror. It’s not like the scene focuses on it, but the reflection starts late and stops early then freezes and the light source changes over it for no reason. It honestly would’ve been better if they just neglected to put the reflection in. It’s at such an angle that no one would really question why it wasn’t showing up anyway.
This song doesn’t make any sense. Camilla is very body image positive, saying that even broken toys and everything are beautiful, but immediately after she says they’re beautiful, she says she makes them beautiful again by fixing them up and basically giving them makeovers. The line literally goes “Everything is beautiful, so beautiful, I make them beautiful” Which is it? Are they beautiful, or are you going to make them beautiful? Because those are two very conflicting statements.
The toys have nowhere to go once Camilla fixes them, so Rudolph suggests that he get Santa to find them homes like he does for the misfit toys on the island. Camilla agrees and offers to grant them their fondest desires as payment. Rudolph wants a nose job, and Hermey wants a date with the tooth fairy. By the way, the nose job crack wasn’t my joke. Camilla literally says she can give him a nose job.
Rudolph happily accepts, but Hermey urges him to think about it since a nose job is permanent. He asks what Santa will do if there’s another foggy Christmas eve.
Camilla: “Santa can’t afford headlights, darling?” Hey, stop poking holes in things I’ve already poked holes in! Also, when the characters in the actual continuity bring this up, it really brings to light (no pun intended) that Rudolph was really in no way necessary to save Christmas.
Hermey asks what he’ll do if Clarice doesn’t like it, and Rudolph immediately turns and tells Camilla he’ll have to think about it.
Pffthahaha!
“What if Christmas is in danger again?”
“Eh.”
“What if you lose your sex ticket?”
“OH GOD, I HAVE TO THINK ABOUT THIS!”
The gingerbreadmen fix up the toothmobile, and Rudolph makes it home in time for his flying lesson with Clarice, which is another interesting aspect I like. Every adaptation makes it seem like the females either aren’t allowed to fly or can’t. It’s nice to know they can, but why don’t they get invited to the reindeer games?
Clarice isn’t good at it, which depresses her because she wanted to impress Rudolph. Surprisingly, she feels a bit down on herself since she’s so ordinary and he’s so famous. Rudolph admits that he loves her, and Clarice starts joyously running around yelling that he loves her. This is pretty adorable, especially when Rudolph shoves his head in a snowbank out of embarrassment and Clarice starts flying around very well because she’s so happy. The Clarice part is especially nice because it’s a bit of a throwback to the original movie where Rudolph starts his impressive flight because Clarice said he was cute.
Comet comes to get them stating that the warehouse was robbed. As everyone discusses it, we learn the toy taker even took the toy soldiers guarding the place…..It never even occurred to me how doubly stupid it is to guard a toy warehouse with toy soldiers from someone named the TOY TAKER.
Hank the elf suddenly says he saw a giant flying football outside the night of the robbery, and Clarice says it must’ve been a blimp. I’m sorry, how does Hank the bookworm elf not know what a blimp is? It’s 196…5? Rudolph comes up with the grand idea to investigate the scene of the crime and catch the Toy Taker so they can get the toys back by Christmas.
As they’re investigating the warehouse, Hermey’s old boss shows up.
Boss: “YOU AGAIN!”
Hermey: “Actually, I’m a dentist now.”
Uhh….were your script pages stuck together? Because that line doesn’t follow properly.
His boss complains that Hermey left his crew one elf short…..again, have they not seen the original movie? His boss gave him the okay to go off and be a dentist at the end.
Hermey: “You’d better be nice. One of these days, you’ll need a dentist. And I’m the only one around.”
Boss: “I wouldn’t let you touch my chompers with a ten foot pole, you tooth maniac!”
What the? First of all, is Hermey threatening his boss here? Because nothing sounds quite as horrific as a dentist with a vendetta.
Second, the only dentist around? What about all those other elves who graduated from the Elf Academy for the Dental Arts? Where the hell did they all go?
Third, uh Boss man? You already have let him near your chompers. At the end of the last movie, remember? You even set up an appointment for more dental work.
Clarice finds a clue, which is stuffing for stuffed animals. Santa sniffs and licks it—okay, new rule. No more licking stuff in these movies. Thank you.
Santa says the stuffing is a type he hasn’t used in years. How he knows that by sniffing and licking it, I don’t know. Rudolph and his friends make a map of the Toy Taker’s hit locations and try to figure out his next destination. They realize he’s likely heading for either the Island of Misfit Toys or Castaway Island and head out. Along the way, they recruit Yukon. They redo the gag of Yukon pulling the sled with the dogs on it, which is cute. This time it’s including Bumble, but bullshit he’s pulling Bumble.
Cut to the Toy Taker, who, by the way, looks like a giant Vivi. We learn of the Toy Taker’s intentions, which are to save toys from children. He says the happy times with a child are fleeting and that they’ll easily throw away toys when they’re bored of them. Old toys from the Island of Misfit Toys, such as Charlie in a box, the doll and the elephant try to argue that their children love and need them, but the Toy Taker convinces them that, no matter how much they may love and enjoy the toys now, they’ll tire of them soon enough and throw them away. He also pointlessly picks up a duck toy for a few seconds without dialogue then puts it down. *shrug*
Charlie: “Wait a minute! I read about you in the papers! You’re a crook!”
Nooooo! What gave it away? The fact that he stole you? Keep up, Charlie.
The Toy Taker wins them over even more with a villain song. It has its moments, but like most of the songs in this movie, the melody is screwed up. You can’t catch the beat at all, and it’s hard to follow.
Also, he rhymes ‘modus operandi’ with ‘Ghandi’ by pronouncing Ghandi’s name wrong.
Scoop: “Maybe, just maybe, they had a chance to catch the Toy Taker at his own game.” BEAT him at his own game. What you said makes no grammatical sense.
Castaway Island has already been hit, so Rudolph and the others meet with King Moonracer and devise a plan.
Sure enough, the Toy Taker’s next target is indeed the Island of Misfit Toys. Rudolph, Clarice and Hermey dress up as toys to fool the Toy Taker and find out where he’s taking them. Hermey is dressed up as a molar……Hermey, we need to have a talk. You’re getting a little too obsessed with teeth. I know I made that serial killer joke in the original movie review, but I’m starting to believe there’s more merit to that claim than I thought. Please seek help. Is there an elf being chastised for wanting to be a psychiatrist, perhaps?
Also, Yukon’s dressed as a ballerina. No, I didn’t ever need to envision that either. But since I had to see it.
You’re welcome.
Bumble’s dressed as a bunny, and this movie continues to impress me with how they can consistently make this monster who used to legit give me nightmares even creepier. The Toy Taker can’t take Bumble with him because he’s too big. No, I didn’t ever want to envision Bumble having an emotional breakdown in a bunny suit either. But you must share my torment.
No worries, though, because Bumble follows them.
The toys are entranced by the song of the Toy Taker’s flute. When they realize Rudolph and the others aren’t toys, they alert the Toy Taker, who drops them from the blimp. You were nearing sympathetic until the whole attempted murder thing.
Also, Clarice saves a knocked out Rudolph from falling, so she’s a legit flying reindeer now. Hooray!
They fly up and confront the Toy Taker, who escapes. Yukon tries to follow, but his cleats start destroying the blimp. Yukon falls from the blimp and–
Scoop: “Looks like our friend, Cornelius, is done for. Or is he?”
Looks like that was a pointless and intruding interlude. Or was it?
It was.
Just reminding everyone that’s I’m still here and still not nearly as entertaining as Burl Ives.
Bumble catches Yukon. Hey, have you ever wanted to see Bumble in a bunny outfit tickling Yukon while he wearing a ballerina outfit?
2001: “Who would even conceive such a–No!”
Neither have I! But I have now! And now so have you!
2001: “My soul is hurting.”
Rudolph and Clarice go to combat the Toy Taker….not knowing that Yukon was caught by Bumble, meaning they just left their friend to die. Nice. The Toy Taker, afraid of Rudolph’s light, jumps from the blimp. Spoiler alert – there’s no reason why the Toy Taker is afraid of Rudolph’s light. They just needed to make it useful. He lands insanely conveniently right outside of Yukon’s peppermint mine. Enter mine cart chase!
Meanwhile, Hermey’s trying to control the crashing blimp and is caught by Bumble. Can we please get some consistency on Bumble’s size? One minute, he’s about the size of a bear the next he’s big enough to catch a blimp.
Back with Rudolph and Clarice, we finally get a shot that seems interesting and fun with a first person view of them riding the mine cart like a roller coaster, but it’s 95% ruined by the ugly intrusion of the red light from Rudolph’s nose. No hate, man – the light is just not conducive to this shot.
Again, the Toy Taker tried to legit murder them by throwing lanterns at them, which promptly explode on the tracks below them. They don’t damage the tracks, however, because that would be too much work to animate.
The Toy Taker changes the track direction on them, but it’s pointless because the tracks then intersect back together a short while later….*shrug* Also, who knows their ‘chase on something on tracks’ tropes?
2001: “The tracks are unfinished?”
YUP!
2001: “How did Yukon work like that?”
Dunno, and the creators won’t care enough to address it. They both make the jump, though, so it was entirely pointless.
The tracks are unfinished again, this time it crashes, but they’re flying reindeer, so it was, again, entirely pointless.
Rudolph saves the Toy Taker from falling and corners him.
Rudolph: “Surrender, Toy Taker!”
Toy Taker: “Surrender? I don’t know the meaning of the word!”
Clarice: “It means you give up!”
It’s called ‘sarcasm’, Clarice.
They let the Toy Taker get away insanely easily just because they hear their friends coming. Good job.
Don’t worry, they capture him less than a minute later. Hooray for pointlessness!
They uncloak him to reveal that he’s actually a teddy bear.
Toy Taker: “Pay no attention to the teddy bear behind the cloak. I am the Toy Taker! Fear me! RRRAAGGGGHHH! BLAHHH!!”
That was probably the most embarrassing thing I’ve seen put to film in years. Congrats, Toy Taker.
He’s an old teddy bear with stuffing falling out of him, connecting the stuffing from the warehouse to him…..which means, technically, Santa licked the fallen entrails of the Toy Taker…..Ughghhghghg.
The bear, named Mr. Cuddles, gives us his backstory in song. The song itself isn’t that bad, it’s the vocals that kill it. His voice cracks on every other word. I don’t know if teddy bears go through puberty, but he desperately needs to do so right now…..Oh by the way, Rick Moranis is the Toy Taker/Mr. Cuddles…..Sorry. Love him in practically anything else, but he really is terrible here.
Mr. Cuddles used to belong to a boy named Steven, who loved him and played with him all the time-You know what, just watch that scene from Toy Story 2 where Jessie explains her backstory. They’re nearly identical and the song is much better.
The line accompanying this shot is ‘holding me tightly in his arms.’ Looks like he’s holding him pretty loosely there. Also, he’s sleeping on top of the covers with no blanket…..with his jeans on….and his sneakers.
Also, you might want to pay attention to your timelines, GoodTimes. From everything we can gather, it’s supposed to be 1965 right now. And Mr. Cuddles is supposed to be old – at least a few decades or so. Yet his Steven is playing a video game that looks like it’s from the NES or Sega Genesis era.
Gee willikers, these noobs sure are poor at this video game. I should tell them that I just necked with their mothers.
Santa: “I happen to know that your boy’s been looking for you. I’ll gladly take you home to him.”
What the hell is this? Mr. Cuddles is very old, meaning Steven must be fairly old by now. At least in his twenties or thirties or something. I seriously doubt he’s looking everywhere for his teddy bear.
If he means so much to him anyway, why did he ignore him, let him get all tattered, throw him in a cardboard box and then throw him away?
This is the worst possible way to address this plot point – mostly because they’re not really addressing it. Let’s be unrealistically optimistic. Steven didn’t mean to throw Mr. Cuddles away and feels remorseful for letting him get all crappy. Even if he’s an adult now, Steven still wants his bear. That doesn’t mean that Mr. Cuddles’ worries are invalid.
One day, whether through being bored of him or after Steven dies, Mr. Cuddles will probably be back in a dump. Most toys do end up with the fate of their children outgrowing them and throwing them away – Even the ones he stole. Either that or they end up in cardboard box purgatory for decades.
What are you going to tell the toys in Cuddles’ hideout after they’ve been convinced by Cuddles’ speech?
“We’re returning you home!”
“That’s great, but what about our owners someday growing up and throwing us away?”
“Don’t worry. They’ll love and keep you forever!”
“That seems very unlikely. Also, we may be near immortal, but people age and die.”
“No they don’t!”
“What? Of course they d—”
“Shut up and get in the sleigh.”
Let’s go back to Toy Story 2. They didn’t fix Jessie’s problems by trying to find her old owner because they knew she had outgrown her and didn’t care about her anymore. They knew the solution was finding her a new owner who was young and would actually play with her and care for her.
In Toy Story 3, they all faced this fate because Andy and Molly had both grown up and outgrew toys. They were eventually given to another child to keep the cycle going. Even very old toys can find love and adoration if you find them the right owner. Usually it’s another small child, but you can also find (not crazy) collectors and enthusiasts who enjoy the history and designs of these toys.
Also, you might be able to forgive his thievery, but he tried to kill Rudolph, Clarice, Hermey and Yukon at least twice. Put that bear in toy jail.
Camilla fixes Cuddles and asks if Rudolph’s made up his mind about the nose job. He remembers that having a light affixed to his body that doesn’t require batteries is kinda convenient, so he declines.
……Again, that doesn’t solve Rudolph’s actual problem. He didn’t really hate his nose – he hated that it was basically a novelty now that he was famous. He didn’t learn to deal with the annoying aspects of being famous or being treated like a side-show act. He just learned to accept his nose….which he already learned how to do in the first movie.
There’s a final song, it’s awful.
Wrap up: Bumble gets dentures, which defeats the purpose of ripping his teeth out in the first place, and Hermey gets some sweet tooth fairy tail.
2001: “I completely forgot about that.”
So did everyone else. God forbid she get some characterization outside of that one line from earlier. She’s now literally a prize for Hermey.
Santa arrives at the now adult Steven’s house. According to him, he never meant to throw Cuddles away. He was saving him to be a family heirloom……Bullshit. He was ignored and left to get all ratty for years, thrown in a closet, thrown in a box and then thrown away without anyone even looking in the box, but he was meant to be an heirloom? What kid or teenager is saving heirlooms at that age – especially a rather plain teddy bear? And if he was, why didn’t he fix him up? Leaving a ratty toy in the closet just makes their existing problems worse and harder to fix. And, again, that doesn’t really solve the problem at hand for any other toy. How many toys are saved as family heirlooms?
I’m sorry if I’m sounding like a cynical butthole, but it’s the truth.
The end.
Bottom Line: This movie was unnecessary, poorly written and was purely banking on the nostalgia factor of people who loved the old Rankin/Bass special. They also probably wanted to try and squeeze out some profit after the abysmal box office numbers for Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer: The Movie.
The plot is flimsy, but would have been something on the ‘suitable for a direct-to-video crap sequel you put in dentist offices and hair salons for kids’ shelf if not for the terrible resolution that doesn’t solve any of the legitimate problems Cuddles brings up. They could have easily solved the issue in the manner I suggested, but they just decided to lazily say ‘oh, Steven never meant to throw you away and has been longing to see you for years!’
In the aspect of being a sequel, it’s baffling how many little details they remember about the last movie while completely ignoring major aspects of it.
Rudolph’s plot is basically a non-plot that is rehashing the problem he had from the last movie just in the opposite direction. Instead of hating his nose for all the negative attention it’s getting him, now he’s hating it for the positive attention. There’s no question if Rudolph will get a nose job at the end, and boy do I feel like an idiot saying the words ‘Rudolph will get a nose job’….If he got a nose job, not only would it completely destroy the message from the last movie, but then he’d no longer be the titular ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’. No one wants to sing ‘Rudolph the Normal Reindeer. Had perfectly normal features. And he lived a normal life. That’s about it I guess.’
I have to call out the title too. Barely any of this movie takes place on or has to do with the Island of Misfit Toys. I’d have to go back and clock it, but I think they spend more time at Castaway Cove. A more fitting title would be Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and the Wrath of the Toy Taker or Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and the CGI that Nearly Ruined Christmas.
A few good things I’ll give this – I definitely enjoyed the interactions between Rudolph and Clarice, and it had a few humorous moments. They didn’t destroy many characters from the original movie. They backtracked the character development of Hermey’s boss and completely destroyed Moonracer, but that’s about it. For the most part, they’re just not really as endearing anymore. Bumble’s nicer, but indefinitely creepier, and Hermey’s a little closer to being a serial killer. Oh and also they completely deleted Donner and Mrs. Donner. They bring back Hermey’s boss for a few minutes, but completely forget Rudolph’s parents?
The most I can give the plot is that it’s not a flat-out retelling of the original movie’s plot. It is an original story – it’s just not a good one.
I’d like to conclude this by giving a bit of a warning. Some people on IMDB have been saying that someone’s been falsely jacking up the rating on this movie and the 1998 Rudolph movie on review websites by making fake accounts and giving it damn near perfect scores.
I honestly wouldn’t be surprised. This movie’s not an unholy abomination upon God, but it certainly doesn’t deserve a 5.5 on IMDB or even a 44% on Rotten Tomatoes. I can believe some people find this movie to be an alright little kiddie movie to play to shut the younglings up, I can even believe some people like it because of the nostalgia, but I’ve legit seen people in reviews call this one of their favorite movies.
To each his own, really. I respect people’s opinions, but the only way I’d believe this is anyone’s favorite movie is if this is the only movie they’ve ever seen…..and even that’s a stretch.
Voice Acting: The voice actors are absolutely wasted on this project – and I can bet most of the budget went towards getting their names on the movie. No one was particularly bad. Jamie Lee Curtis as Camilla was particularly good because I could barely recognize her. Scott McNeil (Yes, famed anime voice actor, Scott McNeil) as Hermey, Yukon and Comet was also surprisingly good. His impressions were….impressive. Kathleen Barr, who voiced Rudolph in the other GoodTimes movie, does a fairly good impression of Rankin/Bass Rudolph as well. Rick Moranis…..Oh boy. I’m just going to assume you were directed to act like a prepubescent boy pretending to be a teddy bear.
Art and Animation:
This is some of the worst art and animation I’ve ever seen. It’s borderline Ratatoing or Food Fight levels of bad. The textures are nonexistent, there are animation errors and polygons everywhere, nobody moves in the least bit naturally, some of the models look so horrible that you really think they’re not finished such as Scoop, Bumble and Yukon, everyone is dead-eyed and creepy, especially the kite, gingerbreadmen and the reindeer themselves, there’s weird and ugly lighting, and nothing feels like it’s there.
When you’re being beat out by a mile in realistic animation, designs and feelings by a cheap 1960’s stop-motion movie that many people describe as having creepy animation, you have major problems. I’m not expecting CGI miracles in 2001, but if you’re going backwards in your graphics quality after nearly FORTY YEARS OF TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCEMENT maybe, just maybe, you might want consider other avenues of animation.
Music: Mediocre at best and terrible at worst. Each song seems like it suffers from the same problem – remnants of a catchy chorus that is ultimately ruined by something annoying followed by a terrible out of whack verse and bridge.
What do you think, 2001?
2001: “I think a bad year was just made exponentially worse.”
Sorry about that.
2001: “No you’re not.”
Hey, look at the bright side. You’re in the peak time for boy bands!
2001: “…..Hooray?”
Bye, bye, bye!
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Box cover artwork may be ridiculously higher quality than actual art.
Plot: Rudolph the Red—We’ve been over this.
Breakdown: Hi 1998!
1998: “Err…hi.”
I was nine in 1998!
1998: “Congratulations.”
Hey 1998, I’m gonna do you a favor!
1998: “What?”
I’m gonna make Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer into a movie!
1998: “Uhhh, isn’t that already a thing?”
Yeah, but that was made in 1964. People who were kids in that year are old people now. We need to jazz things up a bit for the 90s. Say, did your precious 60s version have the northern lights depicted as fairies in silk robes?
1998: “…..Noooooooooo.”
Did it have an ice queen named Stormella?
1998: “Alright, that name’s just lazy.”
Did it have a polar bear named Leonard?
1998: “How is that relevant?”
Here, let’s talk about it in excruciatingly unnecessary detail.
1998: “I would, but I have to catch up on Pokemon. I might miss out on all of Ash’s character development.”
…..Trust me, sweetie, you won’t be missing anything for about a decade – and then they just reboot the franchise.
Welcome, everyone, to that other Rudolph movie that no one asked for and really no one ever wanted ever.
And a fond welcome to GoodTimes Entertainment – the animated Asylum of the 90s. Alright, maybe that’s a bit harsh. The production values on GoodTimes movies never seemed to get Asylum bad (Dangerously close once, but we’ll address that another time), but the same skeevy production practices were similar. Namely in that GoodTimes had a habit of releasing movies that were based on stories that anyone could easily base a movie off of BUT that already had a major motion picture made of it (usually by Disney) so it would trick consumers (IE grandparents, parents, aunts and uncles who don’t know any better) into buying it, believing it to be the blockbuster hits. For instance, some of GoodTimes more notable works were Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Thumbelina, Sleeping Beauty, Pinocchio, Cinderella, Pocahontas, Sinbad and, well, *pokes title*
They not only had the same titles, but they also intentionally made their VHS covers emulate the Disney movie covers. Their similarities were so stark that Disney filed a lawsuit against them and won. They now had to clearly print ‘GoodTimes Entertainment’ and their logo on the boxes to differentiate themselves more clearly, but the damage had been done.
GoodTimes was now largely known as a knockoff company, but that didn’t stop them from producing these kinds of movies since public domain is free game for anyone, no matter how massively successful some movies based on public domain works are.
In comes Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer: The Movie – A film with a mouthful of a title made by GoodTimes in conjunction with Golden Books Family Entertainment. Yup. Those Golden Books. The gold leaf spined books from your childhood that are still going strong today – including adaptations of two Star Wars movies. *shrug*
But let’s wait. Reserve judgment. I am a fair person. Let’s go over this movie and see how it stands up, objectively.
The northern lights, portrayed as the aforementioned fairies, visit Blitzen and his wife, Mitzi, as they welcome their son, Rudolph, into the world. I have to ask, does Rudolph have a canon father? Because in the 60s version, Donner was his father.
We then get some of the most boring opening credits I’ve ever seen as we just watch snow fall on a faraway shot of some house while ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’ plays.
And nothing gears you up for a movie more than hearing Richard Simmons is doing voice work for it.
Hey, who wants to hear the northern lights sing their introductions?!
1998: “Not me.”
I knew you did! This 15 second song break explains that the pink fairy is Aurora, the blue one is Sparkle, the yellow one is Twinkle and the pink one is Glitter. It never matters, so don’t bother remembering it.
I actually wouldn’t mind this as much if not for the fact that this did not, in any way, need to be a song break, and the song ended abruptly on a note that doesn’t sound the least bit like a finale note.
As Blitzen and Mitzi show Rudolph around Christmas Town and introduce him to snow, we get his ear-piercing, high-pitched shrill of a voice. You know when a kid is having a temper tantrum and they let out this scream from the pits of hell they keep locked in the back of their throat? Imagine that scream in a happy context and that’s Rudolph’s speaking voice. I was going to give this movie points for at least not having that terrible screeching noise that Rankin/Bass Rudolph had when his nose glowed, but if you’re just going to shift that sound to his speaking voice, why bother?
Blitzen starts having concerns over Rudolph’s glowing nose when his other reindeer buddies show up, Comet, Cupid and Dasher. Cupid has a heart on his forehead, by the way. I would complain more, but I actually like that there are different markings and colors for each reindeer. It’s easier to tell them apart. Blitzen, for example, has lightning bolts under his eyes like Ash Ketchum.
Blitzen tries to hide Rudolph, and I feel like this movie is shaming Rankin/Bass Donner a bit by having Mitzi chastise Blitzen for seemingly being ashamed of his son.
Despite a crowd gathering, no one actually makes fun of Rudolph’s nose, and Rudolph doesn’t seem bothered by it. When you think Blitzen is taking them home because he’s embarrassed by Rudolph, he actually says he’ll fight the next person who makes fun of his nose. But no one did. It’s only natural for people to at least want to look at a reindeer with a 30 watt nose.
I like that they’re making out Blitzen to be much more understanding and loving of Rudolph, worried that Rudolph will be mocked as he grows up and not being a shameful ass like Rankin/Bass Donner was. They even have a song break about how great they think Rudolph (nicknamed Rudy) is, which is where we finally get at least a bit of actual mocking towards Rudolph. They don’t particularly say anything worse than ‘put a lampshade on it’ but just having an entire town sing about your nose would be traumatizing to the poor kid.
Emotional Scarring: The Musical
Two elves named Boone (voiced by Richard Simmons) and Doggle pick up Santa’s mail. They get all excited over a possible promotion to the factory floor….Wait, not all elves are toy-making slaves? And being a toy-making slave in a factory is something you get PROMOTED to? Wow. Being an elf sucks.
They crash into Stormella’s (Voiced by Whoopi Goldberg) ice garden and flee the scene.
Blitzen and Mitzi bring Rudolph to the factory where we get another song break about the elves making toys for Christmas. It’s not terrible, but it’s about as memorable as that thing you forgot at the store earlier.
Stormella bursts in and starts icing the joint, furious that an elf destroyed her garden. In order to quell the attack, Santa (Voiced by John Goodman – Mrs. Claus is voiced by Debbie Reynolds, by the way. It’s not that important, but I really miss her) intervenes and asks the elf responsible to come forward. Boone and Doggle come forward, and Stormella demands to take them to her ice castle or else she’ll close off her ice bridge to the public.
Movie about body acceptance – Makes the villain an overweight woman.
Santa says ‘pfft, who cares? I have flying reindeer.’ and Stormella leaves in a huff—oh sorry, that’s the scene that makes sense. Santa still vehemently refuses, despite that being the only way across the Grand Chasm. Stormella says if anyone crosses the bridge, she’ll bring the worst storm ever to the village, destroying everything and ruining Christmas for good.
Later, when she’s alone, she says she looks forward to someone trying to cross the bridge so she can start the storm and shut down Santa forever…..Uh….lady…if you want Santa gone so badly, why can’t you start the storm now? Who cares if there was a condition to starting the storm? If you’re so powerful and evil, start the storm anyway if that’s what you really want. Villains with integrity rarely ever win.
The northern lights give another micro-song, this time just to tell us that a year has passed. Thanks, you utterly useless wastes of 1950’s fashion.
Mrs. Prancer starts…reindeer class? They explain that Santa picks his ‘flyers’ by holding a junior reindeer competition every year. Whomever ‘shines’ the best will be considered for a position on Santa’s team.
Rudolph proves to be loud and obnoxiously voiced even with a new voice actor for his older version. Like you’d expect, he’s made fun of for his nose. And, like in the other movie, it makes no sense to me that they’re saying he can’t be a flyer because his nose is red and glows. They are laughing WAY too much. It’s been a year since everyone’s found out about Rudolph’s nose – the ‘joke’ of its mere existence gets a bit old, guys.
Rudolph wants a normal nose, so he hides it in the snow and says he’ll stay like that forever. Yeah, no one will ever make fun of a reindeer with his face jammed in a snowbank.
Santa: *looking at Rudolph’s glowing red nose* “You must be Rudolph!”
Rudolph: *completely seriously* “How’d you guess?”
Rudolph, please stop being stupid. At this rate, I’m going to have to make another Ash Ketchum reference, and I’m only allowed three per review.
Rudolph, don’t stick your nose where it doesn’t belong.
Santa gives Rudolph a nice scarf and tells him he likes his nose. +1 over Rankin/Bass Santa. Rudolph tells him about everyone mocking him.
Rudolph: “It hurts, your honor.” Your honor? The hell? He’s not a judge. That sounds so weird.
He believes he can’t be a flyer because of his nose, but Santa tells him everyone’s different and that he has a big heart. Song break time as Santa tells Rudolph that everyone’s important in Santa’s family, and Rudolph’s a part of that family. John Goodman’s singing this, so it’s alright, but the song is mediocre to say the least. Also, I’ll be addressing the animation later, but they very clearly show Santa talking/singing for about three seconds in the sleigh with no singing or talking actually happening.
This is nice and all, but that just begs the question, if Santa likes Rudolph in this version and everyone highly respects him (to the point where he’s called ‘your honor’) why can’t Santa just tell everyone to stop mocking Rudolph? They would most likely listen. I know Santa just met Rudolph, which is odd considering he’s a fawn of one of his flyers, but he must’ve heard about him and known everyone makes fun of him. And why are the elves, who have also been making fun of Rudolph, now singing along in this song of acceptance to him?
Another pointless and, at this point, friggin’ annoying micro song break by the northern lights to alert us that it’s now Christmas Eve and Santa’s heading out. Thanks. As Rudolph tries to get a better view of them heading off, we get understanding of where a good chunk of the budget probably went – Paul McCartney’s ‘Wonderful Christmastime.’
As they fly away, Rudolph starts talking to himself, imagining being the new reindeer on Santa’s team and making an acceptance speech about it. Really not making him anymore likable. If he’s not being annoying or stupid, he’s being embarrassingly awkward. He thanks his crush, a doe we barely know named Zoey. Even though the rest of the voice acting hasn’t been spectacular, Zoey’s is about as awkward as Rudolph’s imaginary speech. She doesn’t sound like she’s in the scene at all – she just seems like she’s whizzing through her lines without paying attention.
She accepts Rudolph for who he is and doesn’t care about his nose. They’re about to kiss under the mistletoe when Arrow, one of their classmates and son of Cupid, shows up. (Get it? Cupid’s arrow?) It should be noted that there’s someone else in Rudolph’s class with a heart shaped mark on their forehead, but Arrow has no mark yet is actually Cupid’s kid. I guess he could be his brother, but I feel like there was a miscommunication in the art department.
Arrow’s basically Ronno from Bambi, which is strange because his father’s namesake is the god of love. He makes fun of Rudolph and is trying to get in Zoey’s metaphoric pants. Here’s the thing, despite standing up for Rudolph and coaxing him into kissing her, Zoey says they’re only friends and even follows Arrow when he tells her to, even though there seems to be no reason for it. Give Faline some credit – when she went with Ronno, it was because he was obviously forcing her to go. Here, it just seems like Zoey really doesn’t want to be seen with Rudolph or is, for some reason, obligated to go with Arrow.
Rudolph gets all excited when Zoey looks back at him and yells out that she likes him, but again, dude, she just totally ditched you to walk home with Arrow. You might be able to argue that she left so Arrow would leave Rudolph alone, but leaving with him just gives him all the power in that situation. He got the last word, the last laugh and the girl.
The northern lights show up again to tell us that yet another year has passed, and Rudolph has been training the whole year for the junior reindeer games. Thanks for continuously breaking the ‘show, don’t tell’ rule of filmmaking in such a terrible and sloppy manner, you animated canker sores.
Zoey gives Rudolph her heart pendant for luck, and they all start the games, which begin with a race.
Arrow’s purposely crashing people, but Rudolph manages to keep up with him. Arrow pisses him off by telling him Zoey’s only nice to him because she feels sorry for him, prompting Rudolph to shine his nose and temporarily blind Arrow, sending him crashing. Rudolph wins, but is disqualified for illegal use of a glowing red nose (That’s actually a rule?) and is banned from the rest of the games.
And, of course, Arrow wins by default.
Oh boy! I get to rant! Whee!
First of all, this is one of those irritating as hell times where an antagonist is clearly cheating, tons of people witness it, yet no one cares. Rudolph and Doggle even point out that he’s cheating, but don’t say a thing as Arrow’s crowned winner. He’s purposely crashing people – you can tell without so much as a question. Did Rudolph technically win illegally too? Yeah. And he shouldn’t win the race like that, but disqualifying him and not Arrow is ridiculously stupid and unfair.
Second, Santa and Mrs. Claus also agree that this isn’t fair yet Santa says the judge has the final say in this, not them. Uh, no. You’re Santa Goddamn Claus. You have the final say in everything. Even if you were just a spectator, if you feel something’s been done unfairly, you have a responsibility to speak up and ensure fairness in the competition.
Third, why the hell does Arrow win by default? If the first place winner is disqualified, the honor usually goes to the second place winner, who was Zoey. Arrow didn’t even cross the finish line from what we saw. It went number five, who was Rudolph, seven, who was Zoey, and four who was some other reindeer. Arrow was one, and he never crossed.
Are you telling me he won because he was neck and neck with Rudolph before his nose glowed? That’s not how races work.
Zoey angrily tells off Arrow, saying he’s a cheater. So you know he cheated too…..TELL SOMEONE. There are several officials around you – say something!
Arrow doesn’t care, and Zoey says he doesn’t deserve to be a flyer because true flyers are brave, have character and true hearts, like Rudolph. To which Arrow responds.
Arrow: “Tch, but he has a red nose.”
Air tight logic, there.
It occurs to me that one of the more common design elements of Santa himself is a big red nose. It doesn’t glow and it’s probably due to cold, but it’s true.
Zoey: “I don’t want to be your doefriend anymore.” Wait, what the hell? She really was dating Arrow this whole time?…..Two-timing whore! Why would she be with him anyway? For over a year! She doesn’t even seem to like him. What is with this girl?
Rudolph, hearing his father refer to his nose as an ‘accident’, runs away, even though his father was actually trying to defend him.
We get another song break, ‘Show Me the Light,’ which is a duet between Rudolph and Zoey. It’s alright, but fairly short and pointless. He’s lead to a frozen lake that seems to be bathed in rainbow light. Just when you think the northern lights might actually be useful to the plot, he turns away from it. ‘Show me the light….so that I can walk away from it.’ The northern lights actually do show up and light up a cave….that is literally ten feet away from him. Good job.
Taste the rainbow, idiot.
He tries to lie down for the night when he meets Slyly the fox – one of those characters who acts like a tough guy and picks fights, but is really an idiot and a coward. To make things worse, he has a mobster accent.
One of the most pointless and annoying song breaks ever comes up next. It’s just Slyly trying to cheer up Rudolph by saying it could always be worse, and 95% of the song is just him and his creepy background singers saying “Remember, it could always be worse.”
Rudolph reveals his nose to Slyly and has a ball, completely unprompted, making fun of himself before he believes Slyly will. Whatever develops your characters.
Blitzen and Mitzi go to ask Santa to help them search for Rudolph. He thinks about it for a while when Zoey’s parents burst in asking Santa to help them find Zoey since she went off to find Rudolph. Santa immediately pops up and says he’ll send a search party out as soon as possible. Guess he didn’t like Rudolph as much as he let on.
Zoey tries to cross Stormella’s bridge to find Rudolph. Zoey, sweetie, please use your brain. If the only way over this chasm is over this bridge and Stormella hasn’t opened a meteorological can of whup-ass on the village, then Rudolph probably went a different way.
Stormella catches her and relishes the fact that she can now set that terrible storm that she could’ve created at any time without conditions on the village.
Did I say ‘damsel in distress plot’? Mmm that’s some grade A trope right there.
Rudolph and Slyly are ousted from their cave by an avalanche that was caused by ‘the plot said so’ and they travel to another cave owned by Leonard the polar bear – another one of those characters who sounds like a complete dumbass because they have to preface nearly everything with ‘duuhhhhh’. They trick him out, they make friends – it really doesn’t matter.
The northern lights finally make themselves useful as plot advancers and tell Rudolph that Zoey’s been kidnapped by Stormella. Rudolph’s the only one who can save her for some reason, because….his nose light….is full of love and….stuff?
Rudolph and Leonard cross the bridge and head towards the ice catacombs of the ice fortress without Slyly because he’s too scared. Gee, I wonder if this is the last we’ll see of him. I sure hope he shows up in a pinch moment to save the day out of nowhere because that would be unexpected. But what are the odds of that?
Stormella can’t see who’s crossing the bridge through her crystal ball thing because the light is blinding her view, and she just thinks the alarm is malfunctioning…..You’re telling me people could’ve easily crossed the bridge as long as they had a relatively strong light with them? You’re a horrible villain. And why is a polar bear wearing a snow hat?
1998: “Huh?”
Sorry. It was bugging me.
Zoey starts a reprise of ‘Show Me the Light.’ The song actually has a point this time because they follow her voice to find her through the maze, which wouldn’t actually work in real life, right? Don’t echoes within areas like that make finding people through sound near impossible?
They’re lucky Stormella’s too stupid to have guards set up in the prison, but they get caught by Stormella anyway. How she knew they were in there, I have no clue. The point is, now Rudolph and Leonard are imprisoned too.
Stormella: “That doe crossed my forbidden bridge, and now I’m throwing the storm of the century.”
Zoey: “But…but it’s almost Christmas! A storm will ruin everything!”
Stormella: “Hit it, Ridley.”
*Ridley appears on a turnstile piano behind the wall and starts playing the next musical number.*
*Stormella uses her magic to put on a different gown, change her hair, make a microphone and put a spotlight on her*
Stormella: “I get a certain thrill from every fallen snowflake.”
Nope, nope. Stop. Stop! Too many questions! Let me catch up!
*sigh* Alright.
First, how does “You’ll ruin everything” instantly translate to a song cue?
Second, how long was Ridley waiting behind that wall? Did they rehearse this? Did she wake him up just to say ‘Hey, we have a musical number coming up!’?
Third, why is there is a grand piano on a turnstile behind the wall of this dungeon? Does Stormella really like entertaining her prisoners?
Fourth, why are they taking the time out to sing a song right now if she’s so antsy to get her storm brewing? This is worse than monologuing.
Fifth, is there a ladder in her hair? That definitely looks like a ladder.
Addressing the song as a whole, it’s terrible and only serves the purpose of explaining two things – she loves storms and hates Santa. For no reason. None whatsoever. She just hates him. The song is literally titled ‘I Hate Santa Claus’, but she gives absolutely no reason why. Character motivations sure are hard to write.
Zoey: “Rudolph, you mean everything to me.” That’s why I was banging that complete jackass behind your back for over a year. Love youuuu!
Stormella starts her storm, and guess who shows up? Plot conven—Slyly! He gets the key from a sleeping Storme—sleeping Stormella? Literally ten seconds ago she was making her huge Santa-ruining storm and now she’s sound asleep in her bed? Who is editing this? And why would she fall asleep now? Wouldn’t she stay awake to watch her plan unfold?
They start to escape, but Stormella wakes up and corners them. In an effort to save Zoey from her wrath, Rudolph shines his nose so bright that it temporarily blinds Stormella and knocks her off a cliff. As she hangs from the cliffside, she begs for help, and Rudolph goes to save her. She’s a witch who can create storms, ice formations and evening wear with a flick of the wrist, but she can’t fly or use magic to help herself up?
Rudolph and everyone else, including Stormella’s wolves, pull her up. She’s very thankful and even lets them go, but Slyly says that, since Rudolph saved her life, she owes Rudolph one wish – such are the rules of the north pole…..those rules would only apply to magical beings who can grant wishes….did they make this weird rule purely for Stormella and maybe Santa? That’s stupid.
He wishes for Stormella to be nice, and I’ll admit him responding to her resistances to his wish by just repeating “I want you to be nice” over and over is a bit humorous. It works, but she can’t stop the storm.
They leave, but can’t navigate in the storm. Rudolph lights up his nose, but even though it lights the way, they still say they won’t make it home in the bad weather—wow, that kinda pokes a hole in the finale of the song, doesn’t it?
Never the mind because Boone and Doggle, who have been miraculously following them despite having no clues (Yeah, they found Rudolph’s stuff in the cave, but how’d they find the cave? And how’d it lead them to the fortress?)
The ever-annoying fairies pop up again for another micro-song interlude just to say it’s storming and Santa’s holding a meeting. Thank you. Please shut the hell up.
Santa cancels the trip because of the storm, and Rudolph and the others show up. Apparently, Boone and Doggle’s snowmobile doesn’t have headlights (Seriously, it’s the late 90s now. There’s no excuse for lack of headlights on vehicles.) and despite the fact that they were navigating the storm perfectly fine without them, they use Rudolph’s nose light to guide their way back home.
Blah blah, guide my sleigh tonight.
Zoey gives Rudolph a kiss before he leaves, just to solidify that they’re a thing now….I still think she’s a two-timing whore.
Can I ask a question? From all we’ve seen of Rudolph so far, he can’t fly. After all, if he could, he wouldn’t worry about falling from the cliff on two separate occasions at the ice fortress. Does the medal give him the ability to fly or is this something we’re just ignoring?
…..Something we’re just ignoring. Okay.
As Rudolph and the others make it through the storm, we get our last song, which is alright but….this is weird. I feel like the song is dated. The vocals, the music – it all sounds like a forgotten pop song from the Beetles era.
The next morning, everyone gets their gifts, including Stormella, who didn’t deserve one. She’s been evil her whole life by choice and only became good by magic brain washing. Plus, she’s been nice all of 12 hours.
They return, and the northern lights start singing the titular song. I don’t care what they’re singing – just make them go away. Also, it’s very weird that everyone knows the words to this completely new song. Did they rehearse this while they were away? Does this place have a popular theater department?
The end.
Bottom Line: This movie was bad, but not as horrible as it could’ve been. Comparing it to the Rankin/Bass movie, I like Donner/Blitzen and Santa better, but that’s about it. Taking RB out of the equation, Rudolph’s annoying, the love triangle shouldn’t have been a thing, Zoey’s a two-timing whore who is literally only there to be a damsel in distress love interest, Stormella’s such a pathetic villain she might as well not even be one, and there were way too many useless characters.
The northern lights had no purpose besides being a one-time plot device and providing us with pointless annoying as hell song interludes.
Slyly’s only purpose was freeing them from the dungeon, which was predictable and could’ve been done in a much more clever way without his help.
Leonard’s only purpose was…..he………Leonard didn’t do a damn thing, did he? He was legitimately entirely pointless. Wow.
Boone and Doggle were completely useless outside of causing the event that made Stormella close the bridge and make the storm condition, but I already explained how pointless that was. They came for Rudolph and the others in the end, but that could’ve easily been written as Rudolph and the others merely walking home.
It would’ve been a nice use of his abilities before he went off with Santa. They didn’t even get a promotion in the end, and they barely talk at all in the second half. Santa just says they did a good job in one line and we hardly even see them again.
Arrow was completely dropped as a character after the reindeer games. He never appears again. He gets no comeuppance, he never gets ousted as a cheater, he never makes amends with Rudolph or anything – they just forget he existed.
The conflict was such a non-conflict that they had to force conditional conflicts on it in order to make it a conflict…..That makes sense, right? Not to mention that the plot was resolved in a completely lazy manner. They literally wished the problem away.
Plus, remember that thing I noted in the Rankin/Bass Rudolph review? About how it kinda fixed the problem with the moral that the song had by having everyone change their ways and apologize to Rudolph for how they acted before he saved Christmas instead of making it seem like he only gained respect and adoration because his nose finally proved useful to society?
This movie keeps that problem.
No one apologizes to Rudolph when he returns or says they were wrong for how they treated him. No one really shows respect for him until Santa asks Rudolph to light the way on his sleigh.
You could argue that they changed their minds about Rudolph before then by him defeating Stormella, but there are a few of problems with that.
First, he didn’t so much defeat Stormella as he just magically wished her evil away.
Second, the storm is still occurring either way, so ‘defeating’ her ultimately did little to nothing.
Third, Zoey stepped on the bridge and caused the storm to begin with. And why did she step on the bridge? Because she was looking for Rudolph! Meaning he, by proxy, sorta caused the problem in the first place.
There are definitely worse things to watch, and it’s not like the movie is really pushing bad messages, but it’s very lazily written, isn’t that Christmassy, and there are much better things you could be spending your time or money on.
Voice acting: Slyly and Leonard were annoyingly voiced, Rudolph’s child voice was one of the worst things I’ve ever heard, and Zoey always sounds like she’s just reading from a script and is never really acting. Blitzen sounds awkward numerous times, but other than that, everyone’s just mediocre. The best actors here are John Goodman, Debbie Reynolds and Whoppi Goldberg, who at least sound like they’re trying a little bit.
Art and Animation: Both the art and animation are pretty bad. Some of the background art and landscapes are alright, but otherwise it’s just a lot of very simple designs that barely stay consistent when moving. The animation is obviously very cheap. It juts, the cycles are very obvious, instances of cross eyes happen constantly, and there is even one occasion during Santa’s first run where you can actually see the frames overlap. It really just makes you wonder what the hell they did with the $10 million budget they had. Oh yeah, getting big name celebrities just to sell the movie.
Not like that helped because the movie only got $113k at the box office…..Wow.
Music: The background music is horrible. There are a lot of cartoony trumpet noises and doofy music when the scene doesn’t call for it. Plus, the sound effects are sometimes odd or just non-existent. The vocal songs range from alright to terrible. ‘Show me the Light’ is the best one, but that’s not saying much. The inclusion of ‘Wonderful Christmastime’ brings a bit more Christmas feeling to the movie, but it feels really out of place when there are no other songs like that on the soundtrack. The rest are original songs meant for the movie, outside of the obvious.
So 1998, what do you think?
1998: “I think I just wasted an hour and 17 minutes of my life.”
What does time matter to a year?
1998: “Don’t get philosophical on me after that.”
The good news is, you didn’t get the worst of it!
1998: “What? Really?”
Yup! Farewell, 1998! I’m off to 2001!
1998: “I better warn 2001…..Wait, where’d she get a TARDIS?”
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Plot: It’s Xmas again, and Fry, Leela and Bender are sent to Neptune to deliver Santa’s letters to him. Sick of cowering in fear every year by Robot Santa, they decide to try and destroy him. Their plan fails, but they accidentally encase him in ice. With Santa imprisoned, Bender takes over the role, but will people rejoice at the sleigh bells of a kind Santa, or will Robot Santa’s bad rep be thrown in Bender’s face?
Breakdown: Strangely enough, this Chri—Xmas special is the one I watch every year, over it’s predecessor, Xmas Story. Maybe that’s not so strange, because at this point in the series the writers had gained a better footing with their characters and humor, which hadn’t quite been cemented as firmly back when Xmas Story was made.
I love this episode. It has some great humor, no real tropes and is entertaining from start to finish. It addresses a few questions that were left behind from the last special like, why isn’t it more common to try and kill Robot Santa? He does have a lot of firepower, but you’re telling me the army or national guard couldn’t handle him? Apparently, no, they really can’t. The only reason they caught Bender was because he didn’t have the guns, rockets, missiles or toughness that Robot Santa had. Though that does beg the question as to why so many people are quick to combat Santa when, from all we’ve seen, everyone should be cowering in fear.
Still, if he can be thwarted by ice, surely there would’ve been a successful effort in capturing him in the past 200 years.
This episode reveals Robot Santa’s workshop, which is cleverly put on the north pole of Neptune with a bunch of growth-stunted Neptunians working as his slaves. They even add in that there are other holiday themed Robots like Kwanzaabot, who, understandably, feels ignored, and Hanukkah Zombie, which is never shown or explained, but I am endlessly intrigued by.
It’s interesting how Bender is actually putting effort into being Santa because it doesn’t benefit him at all. He does give up after getting attacked a bunch of times, but who wouldn’t? It’s also weird how just putting on the Santa outfit makes everyone mistake Bender for the real Robot Santa – he looks nothing like him otherwise.
The special is void of heartwarming moments – it’s a purely comedic holiday episode, which is perfectly fine. Not every holiday special has to tug the heartstrings, and there’s more than enough comedy to make up for it.
Finally, the song of the special, ‘The Elves’ Song,’ is catchy, but a bit fast and cluttered. Makes it difficult to be one of those songs that you want to sing every Christmas, but you can’t help but try to sing along when you’re watching it.
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Plot: A sequel to Once Upon a Christmas, this is basically the same premise just with different shorts and super duper early 2000s CGI.
Breakdown: Before we go any further, I want to address something that will bug the crap out of me if I don’t say anything. When I was looking for poster art to use on Once Upon a Christmas, I saw posters for Twice and the thumbnails constantly confused me because they all looked like they said ‘Twice a Christmas’ I thought maybe I was finding a screwed up poster or something, but then I watched the opening of the movie and saw this.
For some stupid reason, they decided to make the word ‘upon’ really tiny and shove it in the line above everything else like it’s superscript. It’s like they had the template for the title card then realized the font wasn’t fitting in properly so they resized the words and forced it to fit.
Our first short is Belles on Ice, a Minnie and Daisy cartoon. You would never guess this is a Christmas short until the very end where they write ‘Peace on Earth’ in ribbon and wish each other a merry Christmas.
Daisy and Minnie are in a figure skating competition, separately, and Daisy accidentally skates out when the announcer starts playing up the next competitor, which turns out to be Minnie. When everyone starts loving Minnie’s performance, Daisy gets very angry and decides to literally steal the show by skating out and being a showboat.
Understandably, Minnie starts to up her game even more to skew focus back on her. They keep going back and forth with this until Minnie suddenly wipes out. Daisy, seeing her friend fall, apologizes. Minnie apologizes too, even though she shouldn’t have to, and the two make a grand finale together.
Realistically, there are a bunch of issues with this short. First and foremost, it’s not Christmas-y. Like I already mentioned, outside of shoving two Christmas lines at the end, you’d never know this was a Christmas special.
Second, Minnie’s also made out to be in the wrong when she was just defending herself and trying to rightfully take back her performance.
Third, Daisy is incredibly petty and jealous here. She’s so intimidated by Minnie’s performance that she can’t even let her finish a full minute of it before she jumps out onto the ice and tries to steal her thunder.
If Daisy’s such an amazing skater to steal the show from Minnie, why didn’t she just wait until it was her own damn turn? The only reason I can think of is that she was pissed about being embarrassed for going out on the ice early, but Minnie didn’t do that – she was just assuming it was her turn based on how the announcer was building up the next performer. Surely they gave them a program that shows the order of participants so stuff like that doesn’t happen.
I didn’t like this segment very much. I liked the reactions of Donald and Mickey a bit, and, for some reason, I was very entertained at the thought of Minnie’s background ice skaters being alligators, but Daisy’s being a bitch, we have two girls who are supposed to be friends being the petty vindictive stereotype that plagues so many girl friend characters, and it has an ending that is unrealistic.
Daisy would be disqualified the instant she went out on the ice either for sabotage or trying to do her performance when it was someone else’s turn.
And I think they might both be disqualified at the end for having a duo performance when they didn’t enter as such.
The next short is a Huey, Dewey and Louie short called Christmas Impossible.
The boys, Donald and Daisy are spending the holiday at Scrooge’s mansion. The boys have learned jack from last year’s Christmas because they’re back to being rude selfish brats. Scrooge tells the boys that he’s been selfish his whole life and never got on Santa’s nice list. The boys ask why that even matters since being selfish made him rich, but he says that being rich never got him what he really wanted. He tells the boys to not follow his example and to clean up their acts to make it on Santa’s nice list. However, it’s so close to Christmas that the boys conclude there’s no way for them to make up for all the crap they’ve done over the past year to be considered nice before Santa heads out to make his deliveries.
They decide to mail themselves to the north pole and write their names on Santa’s list themselves. By the way, Max, you could’ve saved yourself a lot of trouble with your Santa faith in the last movie if you just mailed yourself to the north pole. Apparently, they live in a world where you can mail yourself to the north pole and back within the time frame of a night on Christmas eve.
They’re still jackasses while traversing the workshop. They’re trying to get the key to Santa’s office so they can put their names on the list, but they end up destroying all of the wrapping on the gifts in order to find it. They don’t seem to care until they realize that their actions are going to ruin Christmas for everyone. They decide to fix their mistake and help the elves get everything back to normal, including a very distracting fast-motion scene that is ridiculous in CGI.
They finally get into Santa’s office and are about to write their names on the list when they decide to write Scrooge’s name instead. Why they didn’t write their names too, I don’t know. They never came to the realization that they didn’t deserve to be on the nice list, and there was plenty of room on that paper.
The next morning, they see Scrooge’s gift, and it’s bagpipes…..I get that the message is that Scrooge wanted to be on the nice list and you can’t buy your way onto it, but the way it’s written, it was like he asked for something that money couldn’t buy and he never got it because he was never good enough to be on the nice list. Pretty sure you can buy bagpipes pretty easily.
Huey, Dewey and Louie are surprised to find that they also have a bunch of gifts from Santa, meaning they got on the nice list. A note from Santa states that there’s always room on the nice list for kids who put others before themselves and thanks them for helping out at the workshop.
*sigh* First, the only reason they were even at the workshop to begin with was because they were putting themselves first. They wanted to fraudulently put themselves on a list they didn’t deserve to be on just to get toys.
Yes, they put Scrooge’s name on the list instead of their own, but that’s something else to ponder. If they had to write Scrooge’s name on the list, doesn’t that mean he didn’t deserve to be on the list either? Their hearts were in the right place when they did that, but they still technically tried to manipulate Santa for the sake of getting a naughty person a gift.
Second, they only helped clean up the mess they caused. It’s a good thing that they realized they should fix their mistake and help save Christmas, but they’re the reason it was ever in danger. It’s not like it was an accident either – they were purposely destroying everything to find the key to Santa’s office. It’s like thanking an arsonist for putting out their fire. And even after they did that, they were still planning on putting themselves on Santa’s list.
This short had its somewhat funny moments, but it’s a tad predictable, and I can’t say I’m really understanding the full message here.
The next segment is a Goofy and Max short called Christmas Maximus, and I need a minute to understand the logistics of this one.
I assumed that this movie was taking place only a year or two after the first one yet Huey, Dewey and Louie are still basically the same age, but Max is now in college. You can’t apply the excuse of the movies being shorts and not existing in the same timeline because the first movie ended with all of the characters meeting up to sing Christmas carols. The only logic I can apply to this is that dogs and ducks age differently? But if we’re taking that excuse, why isn’t Goofy in the least bit older looking?
Anyhoo, Max is coming home for Christmas with his girlfriend, Mona. He asks Goofy to be cool so he won’t embarrass him around his girl, but Goofy, being Goofy, can’t stop himself. Mona finds most of his shenanigans to be charming, but Max keeps getting irritated.
We suddenly get an original song break. The song is called ‘Make Me Look Good’ and it’s told by Max’s perspective. It’s basically what you’d think it would be from the title. Max worrying internally about Goofy embarrassing him and telling him to make him look good. It’s not a musical number sung by Max – it’s just a background song that we’re meant to believe is being sung by someone who kinda sounds like Max.
I don’t get why this short and this situation is where we get a song break, which, by the way, is the only original vocal song break of the movie. It’s not a Christmassy song, and it’s hardly a song that works out of context. The song’s not even all that good. I suppose it’s catchy, but it’s a bit cluttered.
What’s even worse about this song break is that it’s the only thing moving the plot forward. It’s like this short is the song with the only dialogue being an intro to it, a minor interlude and a short finale. That’s the main reason it’s so cluttered. It’s trying to jam everything that would be in the short as regular scenes into short verses in a song.
Goofy does embarrassing things a few times, it’s obvious Mona’s charmed by it, but Max still gets pissed. He has the tiniest of blowups at Goofy, walks away about ten feet before realizing he’s been an ass and that Mona’s having a great time, then he returns and has a nice holiday with his dad and Mona. The clincher of her being ‘the one’ revealing that Mona has the same two lone teeth that the Goof’s have. Okay.
I really think this short would’ve been a million times better if the song wasn’t there and they took the time to just run the segment like normal. It’s so rushed and awkward as a song. It’s a damn shame that this is so messy, because the Goofy short in the last movie was my favorite, and Goofy and Max are my favorite Mickey Mouse characters, besides Pluto.
The next short is called Donald’s Gift.
Donald wants nothing more than to go home and enjoy a nice mug of hot cocoa by the fire after a long day of shopping and people annoying him with Christmas stuff. Daisy, Huey, Dewey and Louie arrive, inviting Donald out to go to the mall. He says he doesn’t want to, but Daisy forces him to go. The boys want to see some spectacular display at Mousy’s, and while they’re waiting, Donald decides to get a hot cocoa. He’s bombarded with everything suddenly turning into sounds that play ‘We Wish You A Merry Christmas’, which leads him to accidentally destroying the Mousy display.
The boys and Daisy think he did it on purpose for some reason and leave him behind at the mall. Donald sulks around town for a while until he finds a bunch of carolers arguing over singing ‘We Wish You A Merry Christmas.’ Donald, having learned the song inside and out by now, conducts for them. Their singing gathers a crowd, including Daisy and the boys who instantly forgive him and they all sing the finale of the song.
This short was….confusing and hard to sympathize with. I didn’t dislike it, but I believe I would’ve liked it more if Donald actually deserved any of this crap. Was he a little bitchy about going to the mall? Sure. But what we saw of his day included a charity Santa literally grabbing him and holding him, singing ‘We Wish You A Merry Christmas’ until he donated some money, a barbershop quartet, singing the same song, cutting his hair into a powdered wig design for some reason as he ran by, and nearly getting run over by a bus which promptly burned his groceries to cinders. I don’t know if I’m just old, but I am very understanding of Donald’s desire to want to avoid Christmas stuff for a while and just sit home and relax if all that stuff happened to me, and I’m a Christmas junkie.
Daisy and the boys pestering him was also a bit hypocritical. Daisy’s telling him not to be selfish, but isn’t it selfish to force someone to do something they don’t want to do just because YOU want them to do it?
Donald wasn’t even ruining their outing at all. He went…to get….a drink. Something he could easily carry around with him while they did their mall stuff. Somehow, that means he’s being a selfish ass or something and deserves to have a ‘The Raven’ style torture of the aforementioned song haunting him until he accidentally causes the display to break because there was a ‘speed everything up to a point where everything spins out of control and breaks’ button right in plain sight.
And, again, for some reason, Daisy and the boys believe he’s that much of a vindictive ass that he would do that on purpose.
The final and longest short of the movie is Mickey’s Dog-gone Christmas – A Pluto short! HOORAY! I’m also happy to report this is the best short of either movie.
Pluto is helping Mickey decorate for a big Christmas party he’s having, but Pluto accidentally breaks everything while trying to put up the star. Mickey yells at him for misbehaving, tells him he ruined Christmas and sends him out to his dog house while he goes out and buys more decorations.
Pluto is very guilty and depressed over what he did, and decides to ditch his collar and run away. He somehow ends up on a train to the north pole where he’s adopted by Donner, who is a much bigger sweetie than he is in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer….but also a lot stupider. He’s made a pseudo part of the reindeer team lead by Blitzen.
Pluto enjoys his time with the reindeer while Mickey fixes up the house. Once he’s gotten everything back to normal, he tries to make amends with Pluto and offers for him to put the star on top of the tree. He quickly realizes Pluto’s missing and drops everything to search all over town for him. He even goes to the mall Santa to wish for Pluto back.
Back at the north pole, Pluto is missing Mickey more and more, and it turns out that the mall Santa was the real Santa. He offers to take Pluto back home, and he happily agrees. He bids a fond farewell to Blitzen and Donner and reunites with Mickey, who proudly puts his collar back on and allows him to put the star on the tree.
The house is nearly demolished by a plow truck who has seemed to have it out for Mickey the whole short, but it’s revealed that Goofy was the one driving. He, Max, Scrooge, Donald, Daisy, the boys and Minnie have been driving all over town in the plow truck looking for Pluto. They enjoy the Christmas party and play us out with the same Christmas song mashup they had at the end of the first movie.
The end.
I thoroughly enjoyed this short. It’s almost hard for me to believe it’s a part of the same movie as the others. Each short has a different set of writers, so maybe Colin Goldman and Matthew O’Callaghan just had a bit more Christmas spark than the others….including someone named, not kidding, Carole Holliday. It has some great comedy, nice character interactions with everyone, especially Blitzen and Donner, whom I really wish come back in some way in another Christmas special, and heartwarming moments. Plus, it’s a Pluto short – who can resist that?
It’s also, a bit sadly, relatable. I can’t count how many times I’ve lost my temper because my dogs have ruined something I worked hard for. If my dogs could understand human language, I can bet there’d be at least a couple times they would’ve felt like running away. But no, they have to make you feel like garbage by giving you the sad eyes, cowering over to you and asking for pets. Of course I forgive you, you furry source of utter destruction.
I do have a few questions, though, like why let Goofy drive? And why buy a whole plow truck company just because you need to use one plow truck? Why is Mickey suddenly very comfortable financially again? Also, since everyone’s back together again, it proves that Max grew up by about a decade yet Huey, Dewey and Louie didn’t grow at all.
This is a great short that would be an awesome standalone for Christmas, but the movie as a whole….
Well, I really enjoyed how the bookends are done in a narrated pop-up book style. I thought that was very clever and a great way to retain some of the traditional-style artwork. It was also a better way of bookending each story than the three random presents holding title cards from the first movie. The CGI had its moments of downright terribleness (I’m looking at you fast-forward scene) but it actually stands up very well for a fully CGI movie from 2004.
Most of the shorts are very weak, though the last one is worth the trouble. I didn’t necessarily hate or even seriously dislike any of the segments. It wasn’t a chore to sit through them, but most of them had glaring logic issues or vaguely bad or unclear messages, and they just weren’t very funny or heartwarming most of the time.
I would’ve been content if the whole movie was just the Pluto short, to be honest.
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Plot: Frosty the snowman was a jolly happy soul. With a corncob pipe and a button nose and two eyes made out of coal. Frosty—Again, there’s no way you haven’t heard this song. You get it.
Breakdown: Surprisingly, this is one Rankin/Bass special I don’t watch very often. I guess because the story never interested me as much as some of the other Christmas specials. It’s even more cut and dry than Rudolph’s. He’s a snowman who came to life, started melting and then he had to go somewhere colder to stay alive. The song’s kinda long but most of it is padding. Not to mention, I don’t know what it is about him, but I never got too invested in the endearment of Frosty as a character. He’s nice, sure, but I find him a little annoying. Especially when he yells out ‘Happy birthday!’ when he’s brought to life. It wasn’t funny the first time, it’s not funny the second or third times.
Even the voice acting is a bit of an off-key aspect to me. Jimmy Durante as the narrator and Jackie Vernon as Frosty just never sat well with me…..Boy, I’m complaining a lot more than I thought I would.
They extend the story for a film version, like Rudolph, but they couldn’t even get half the time (25 minutes) without it really seeming like it’s dragged on.
Not to mention they added an antagonist in Professor Hinkle who really isn’t wrong in his pursuit. He’s wrong to nearly kill a kid by letting her freeze to death unless she handed him a damn hat, but they act like they’re entitled to steal his hat because it made Frosty come to life. Even the narrator agrees that the hat is rightfully theirs.
A quick rundown of the story – Professor Hinkle is a failed magician who is putting on a show for the kids in school for the Christmas party. He sucks, and the kids go out to make a snowman during recess.
They have the snowcrafting skills of gods because they somehow mold an anthropomorphic snow person instead of a traditional snowman. He can even stand on two feet with that big belly. Hinkle’s hat accidentally lands on Frosty’s head by his rabbit, Hocus Pocus. He’s brought to life for a brief moment before Hinkle takes his hat back. The kids are indignant, but can’t do anything about it because they’re kids. Hocus Pocus returns the hat to Frosty, though, and they have a fun day together.
Frosty starts to melt, and they decide to take him by train to the north pole, which defies all laws of everything. One of the kids, Karen, decides to join him. They hop a train since they can’t pay for the $3000 impossible magic train ticket. Frosty stays cool in a refrigerated car, but it makes Karen slowly freeze. Hinkle hitches a ride underneath the train to pursue them.
At a stop, Frosty hops out and tries to save Karen, but instead of going to the town they’re clearly close to and finding her shelter and warmth, they go into the snowy tundra of the woods and wander aimlessly while Frosty, the man made of snow, carries her. Frosty, your heart’s in the right place, but she’s going to lose her toes. Put her down.
Hinkle tries to get off too, but ends up crashing down a mountainside and gets snow plopped on him. And if the sound effects are any indication, the snow was made of pans.
Frosty, the anthropomorphic snowman, does not possess the ability to make a fire, so he enlists the help of woodland creatures to do it. I get that he can’t be near fire but surely he can make one then back away once it’s going. Snow doesn’t melt that fast.
Frosty and Hocus decide to enlist Santa’s help in getting Karen home and him to the north pole. However, Hinkle shows back up, blows out Karen’s fire and attempts to get the hat back again. Frosty and Karen manage to get away and conveniently end up in front of a greenhouse. Frosty, instead of just letting Karen down and allowing her to walk in the greenhouse by herself, carries her in quite a ways, allowing Hinkle to easily trap them inside when he catches up.
Santa flies overhead and stops because….I actually don’t know why. He and Hocus find Frosty as a puddle in the greenhouse with Karen sobbing over him. Santa cheers her up by saying Frosty was made out of Christmas snow, and that kind of snow never goes away, even when it’s melted. He demonstrates how special the snow is by opening the greenhouse door and allowing the chilly air inside, instantly transporting the puddle outside and molding Frosty back to the way he was, button nose, broom and corncob pipe and all. Karen’s about to free us of the cold demonic stare of Frosty’s dead black eyes until Hinkle pops back up to get his hat back.
The hat is fueled by the souls of the damned.
Santa stops him by saying if he tries to take the hat back, he’ll never give him another Christmas gift. I don’t know why he’d be getting them anyway. He’s clearly a naughty person. He even describes himself as an evil magician. Santa tells him to go home and write “I am very sorry for what I did to Frosty” a hundred zillion times in order to get his gift. If Hinkle asked for Carpal Tunnel and hospitalization for exhaustion in trying to complete this impossible goal, he’ll certainly have a merry Christmas.
Hinkle agrees, Frosty’s brought back to life, and Santa returns Karen to her house….leaving her on the roof….with no method of getting down….good job, Santa. Also, her parents probably aren’t home since they likely formed a search team to find their lost daughter. He leaves for the north pole with Frosty, bringing him back every year in the future so he could reunite with his friends.
Despite my nitpicks and complaints, I do see the appeal of this special, and I can get how this would be adopted as an annual Christmas tradition. I’ll watch it every few years or so, but it just never caught onto me as a must-see Christmas special. It also neglected to address something that I always wondered about – where did they get this hat? I know it’s Hinkle’s, but where did he get a legit magic hat?
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The Anime Madhouse 