A Chuck E. Cheese Christmas (2025)

On one level, I appreciate what directors Zac Moncrief and Steve Trenbirth, as well as writer Jon Colton Barry (who co-wrote this with Moncrief), were trying to pull off here. These are all industry professionals - Moncrief and Barry are both veterans of Phineas and Ferb, which almost certainly ranks somewhere on the top ten list of animated series of the last twenty-five years - so this isn't going to be a by-the-numbers exercise in bland, inoffensive kid's media. You can tell they wanted to subvert expectations, push boundaries, and create something with a bit of an edge to the humor. And, again, they have experience in that department.

I thought about that a lot while I watched A Chuck E. Cheese Christmas, the new 50-minute special currently streaming in a couple spots (including free on YouTube, in case there was any doubt this was financed as some sort of marketing promotion). I also thought a lot about the writing and the jokes, because...

I think the writing might be okay? Maybe even pretty good? I found it difficult to tell, because almost all of it fell flat for me. And before you shrug that off as a gen-Xer whining about something written for kids not appealing to him, know the jokes in this special were absolutely written with my generation in mind. The humor, the edge, the references... it's all trying to invoke the feeling of '90s and early '00s animated comedy. This is supposed to work for young kids, sure, but more than that it's trying to reach people who grew up going to Chuck E. Cheese (which... okay, full disclosure: I think I was taken once, and I barely remember it). The primary antagonist is a parody of Legolas - this is aimed directly at nerds in their '30s and '40s, in the hopes of convincing them to take their own kids to Chuck E. Cheese (which I was honestly a little surprised to learn didn't go out of business).

The point is, when I reflect on the jokes, I believe they're funny, but when I heard them in the special, they did nothing for me. And I suspect the disconnect, for me at least, is mostly because this can't escape the undeniable, unforgettable truth that it's ultimately a production of corporate marketing. I tried to set that aside and watch this as if these were new characters (which, on some level, they are, since their personalities were created for this), but the simple feeling I was staring at an extended commercial remained with me the entire time. Again, the people making this clearly understood what they were up against and did their best to break free of that, employing every trick in the book: snarky pop-culture references, poking the fourth-wall with a tacit acknowledgment of this being about a business mascot, jokes that stop just short of being inappropriate for the medium....

Actually, I'm not sure they did stop in time. The aforementioned Legolas stand-in is constantly belittled by one of the protagonists for having feminine features, resulting in a string of jokes that land somewhere on the spectrum between misogynistic and transphobic. It's like a handful of jokes were imported from a 2004 PG-13 comedy and stuck into a kid's special in 2025, and the result is more embarrassing than offensive. But, you know, still a little offensive.

Those aren't the jokes I'm half-heartedly defending, incidentally. But setting those aside, the humor generally seems competently developed. Likewise, I appreciate that the special somewhat subtly embraces a less obvious version of the holidays, suggesting that antiquated concepts based in nostalgia fail to capture the meaning of Christmas, which Santa himself insists is meant to be a sort of revelry of joy. There's some interesting history and commentary being implied here.

It just doesn't matter, because none of it's good enough to overcome the inherent cloying knowledge this is an ad for Chuck E. Cheese. It doesn't help that the special's look is reminiscent of old Flash animation, adding to the sense you're watching some weird online promotion. I'm not sure if better animation would have elevated this to the point it was possible to forget its origins, but it couldn't have hurt.

All right, let's talk premise and story. I already mentioned the antagonist, an elf named Leggymos (pronounced to rhyme with Legolas), who dresses, acts, and speaks like an elf out of Tolkien. Like the other elves, he's been working at the North Pole for centuries, but he believes this is distracting the magical species from their true purpose: defending the world from evil trolls. So the idea is they're fusing D&D elves with Christmas elves, which was almost certainly already an old joke when we made it fifteen years ago.

Meanwhile, Chuck E. Cheese and friends are trying to improve Christmas spirit, since everyone seems to be lacking enthusiasm. When they learn Santa himself is low on holiday cheer, they set out to plan a surprise party for him at Pasqually's Pizza (I hate that I actually know some of the lore this is referencing). Leggymos learns about their plan and sets out to thwart it, which he easily does. However, he then learns that the trolls he believes the elves should be battling have come to love the holidays and embraced its message of goodwill - in other words, by spreading cheer, they have been keeping the world safe from trolls. So he brings a notarized letter confirming he's on a redemption arc (I actually chuckled at that one) to Chuck E. Cheese and helps him salvage the party, rekindle Santa's Christmas spirit, and save Christmas.

Obviously I'm glossing over a lot. Chuck E. Cheese is joined by Jasper (a dog), Helen (a hen), Bella (a bunny perpetually annoyed by her own cuteness), and Munch (a purple... thing). I believe these are all characters based on Chuck E. Cheese's animatronic band, but I don't care enough to check. At any rate, they're all given generic larger-than-life cartoon personalities. These are generally fine, with the exception of Jasper's weirdly antiquated and offensive jabs and Chuck E. Cheese being bland and uninteresting. Otherwise, they've all got hooks and comedic beats, and a few even get arcs.

I'm hesitant to entirely dismiss this, because I'm well aware the main reason I can't engage with this on any level is I can't overlook my associations with the brand. I imagine I'd have a very similar reaction to a cheaply animated Ronald McDonald special if anything like that were made (if there is one, please don't tell me). And there's absolutely a part of me that thinks the IP shouldn't matter (at this point, Star Wars, Marvel, and the like are basically recycled corporate intellectual property leveraged for brand engagement, too, and I'm still able to have fun with that stuff). So, if you're less adverse to sitting through an extended advertisement for a restaurant chain mascot, it's entirely possible you'll be able to have fun with the comedy and bizarre twists this takes.

Though even then, I suspect the animation is going to make for one hell of an obstacle.