Mainlining Christmas

Remember how in my review of The Muppet Christmas Carol , I said it wasn't my favorite Muppet holiday thing? This is my favorite Muppet holiday thing. In this rarely seen television special, the Muppet gang is headed to Fozzie's mother's house for Christmas.  Much singing is done.  I watch this entire hour with a big silly grin. (FYI: Because of rights issues, in the United States three full songs and two partial songs have been cut from all video releases.  Don't believe anyone who tells you this doesn't impact the quality of the special; there are plot points in those songs!  I found a full copy on YouTube. ) The special plays out like a fantastic extra-long episode of The Muppet Show: loosely connected vignettes and songs, and only one human to be seen.  There are ten full songs, plus a medley of eleven more.  There's no new music for this special: it's all classic holiday songs, except Pass It On from Fraggle Rock, and Together at Christmas from Th

First of all, I'd like to send a very special "thank you, but I thought we were FRIENDS" to Jeff Burns for sending us the link to this delightful holiday classic. I actually remember seeing this when it first aired.  Hey, I was a child of the 80's, and Alf was a part of that.  I remember Gordon Shumway, Melmac, and even that music video he made for the Tanners' daughter.  I have good memories watching this show as a child. Yes, Virginia, children are stupid. That editorial, by the way, gets read twice during the special.  It's the abridged version you hear everywhere, of course, with all the great fairy references omitted. The "plot" of the hour-long special revolves around Alf getting in a fight with the Tanners and winding up trapped in the back of a van with a bunch of Christmas presents on their way to the hospital.  He winds up getting handed over to a dying girl, who teaches him the true meaning of melodrama in a long, drawn out, sapp

The Fraggles are usually pretty great, and this episode is no exception. In this Christmas/Solstice themed episode, Gobo questions the utility of their holiday, The Festival of the Bells. He sets out to challenge the myth and find out whether or not the Great Bell actually exists. There's a surprising amount of existential angst in this episode for a children's show starring puppets. Meantime, Doc and Sprocket do a bit of exploring of different holiday traditions, and Doc teaches Sprocket about the link between Saturnalia and Christmas in about ten seconds. It's awesome. There's more than a bit of sappy “look inside for the truth” type stuff by the end, but it really amuses me that not having their festival has actual measurable implications. Also, I'm a sucker for Fraggles, and a sucker for Solstice-themed holiday episodes. I really enjoy the main song of the episode: “There's a Promise” aka “Raise Your Voices” is fun. And Cantus is in it! What'

I remembered liking this when I was younger, but I remembered very little about the special itself until it got going.  In this case, I could have trusted my memory: it's an amazing special. This was produced by Will Vinton, so the animation is just stunning throughout. The structure is a series of carols, linked by scenes starring a pair of dinosaurs who are “hosting” the special.  The T-Rex in the suit attempts to inject some education into the proceedings by giving the origin or history of some songs.  I appreciate the gesture, although I'm not certain all of the history they cite is correct. We start in earnest with a fun version of We Three Kings.  The use of light in this segment is lovely, and the jokes only enhance the song.  There's a humorous Carol of the Bells, and a Fantasia-esque Angels We Have Heard On High. There are jokes in this that I definitely missed as a kid, but what I most enjoy about this is the quality of the animation.  Oh Christmas Tree is a

The Christmas Toy , you may recall, was Toy Story before Toy Story . It's a Henson production, a television special about toys coming to life when you're not around. My vague recollections of The Christmas Toy actually gave me some conceptual trouble with the Toy Story movies. The toys of The Christmas Toy die if they are seen out of place by a human. They DIE. Well, their consciousness is sent to some sort of Limbo, but it's basically the same. Without the same stakes, I sometimes had trouble with why the Toy Story toys bother to hide their mobility from humans. It's kinda weird, if you think it through too hard. Well, the actual plot of The Christmas Toy is about Rugby the tiger, and how he doesn't understand that even though he was Jessie's favorite Christmas present last year, he'll be replaced this Christmas with a new favorite gift. (And it's about a space toy who initially doesn't understand that she's a toy.... but I digre

You know, I had never seen A Christmas Story before tonight.  I mean, sure, I've randomly flipped through channels while it was on, but I've never actually watched more than a minute or two until now.  The only things I knew about this was that it's known as a holiday classic, there's a kid who wants an air rifle (despite being told he'd shoot his eye out), and that there was some sort of lamp shaped like a leg involved. Now, I know a lot more about this.  For example, I know that it was written and narrated by Jean Shepherd, who, according to Wikipedia , "had two children, a son Randall and a daughter Adrien, but publicly denied this. Randall Shepherd describes his father as having frequently come home late or not at all. Randall had almost no contact with him after his parents' divorce." Right now, I'm kind of glad Shepherd was an asshole.  It makes what I have to say about his legacy much easier. As far as classics go, this one's

Like almost everyone who grew up in the 80's and 90's, The Simpsons became my favorite show almost the instant it started.  And it took a while for it to be supplanted, too.  The Simpsons had at least seven great years before running out of character-based humor and interesting stories. And this is the one that started it all.  Oh, sure, the characters were on the Tracy Ulman show prior to getting their own program, but they didn't enter the public consciousness until the Simpson's Christmas Special, more accurately called, "The Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire." I remember seeing this when it first aired.  In a world that's seen Beavis and Butthead, South Park, and Adult Swim, it's hard to convey the power these characters had when they got their first half hour all to themselves.  But The Simpsons predated all that: before Bart, the most subversive animated character most of us had seen was Fred Flintstone. To be honest, I wasn't expecti

Until now, I've never seen an episode of Hello Kitty's Furry Tale Theater.  Hell, I'd never heard of the show.  Ignorance, of course, is bliss. I'm going to ignore the second half of this episode - a boring and unfunny riff on Phantom of the Opera - and focus exclusively on the first short, a boring and unfunny riff on "How the Grinch stole Christmas." There are myriad things wrong with this.  The jokes are trite, the animation is crap, and so on and so forth.  But the real issue here is that they're not so much adapting or paying tribute to the original as they are outright stealing the idea.  Yeah, they're doing it openly, but that doesn't change the fact it's still basically a version of the Grinch. If they'd changed either more or less, it wouldn't be pissing me off as much.  If they'd done it as either a parody or a straight up adaptation, it would have had a point.  But doing the basic premise with a few irritatin

I liked this quite a bit. It's been quite a while since I'd seen it, although a lot of it came back to me as I watched. In case you are very young and deprived, this special is a sweet retelling of Christmas Carol starring all Disney characters. The animation is beautiful and detailed, the one song is pleasant and uplifting. The adaptation has to sprint through the plot to get to the end in half an hour, but it hits all the pertinent bits. I appreciate that they "cast" established characters in the roles of the ghosts, as well as all the others. That was something I felt was a poor misstep in The Muppet Christmas Carol. Scrooge definitely makes the special work, and he doesn't need any extra narration to keep viewers interested.  This Scrooge is short-sighted and greedy, but never evil.  His completely manic glee upon his transformation is an absolute joy. Of course, Scrooge McDuck playing Ebenezer Scrooge is hardly a stretch for the character. All of th

I saw this about eight years ago on Cartoon Network, and I never forgot it.  When we were listing specials we had to track down, this was high on my list.  Very high, in fact. Why?  Is it good?  Of course not: little - if anything - about the Smurfs is deserving of that title.  No, it's not good.  But I'll be damned if it isn't gloriously and hilariously bad. This is one of those specials you need to see to believe.  You see, it's Christmastime in Smurf village, some kids are lost when their sleigh overturns, and Gargamel is up to his old tricks.  Then the devil shows up. Oh, they never call him that, and he doesn't look like the devil: he looks like a Snidely Whiplash in a cape.  But he's the devil, complete with infernal power, contracts, and rules limiting his actions.  And he's kind of scary. And what have the Smurfs to contend with cosmic evil?  A song.  Not just any song: they have what's easily the most grating, obnoxious, and

You know how you've never heard of the 1985 For Better or For Worse Christmas special? Yeah, there's a reason for that. Now, first I want to make a couple quick disclaimers. I've never followed the comic strip this is based on, and don't know any more about it beyond what I've gleamed over the years from news reports and skimming the Wikipedia article. From what I can tell, the comic incorporated some brilliant, long-term storytelling techniques and was probably massively influential, bla, bla, bla. The special wasn't actually bad. It was just... simple. Direct. As inoffensive as it was unfunny. You know something? I'd have preferred outright bad. Really bad specials are still fun. They hold my attention and move along at a clip. Before I know it, they're over, and I'm laughing and thinking of all the interesting things I'm going to say about them. But this... this was just boring. It wasn't sweet or endearing, regardless

As something of a Santa Claus aficionado, this is a movie that fascinates me on an academic level, which is a good thing because it's not a very good movie otherwise.   This movie is very clearly emulating (if not outright copying) Blitzen's Superman.  Apologies - I've just remembered that Donner directed the 1978 Superman movie (Blitzen was at one point in negotiations, but that fell through).  At any rate, there's no denying the parallels: the first third of each movie focus on an otherwise unrelated origin story, both film attempt to transport their respective mythologies into a relatively realistic setting, and in each the villain is Lex Luthor.   The only real difference between the two productions is that Superman was a good movie. However, Lindsay is explaining why Santa Claus was crap , and I see no reason to repeat the same points.  As such, I'd like to discuss why it was almost good.   And that, of course, brings us back ar

Wow, this movie has serious pace issues. It is slow slow slow.  It switches plot at least three times, and each new storyline is only tangentially related to the others. This makes the movie feel even longer than it is. The plots themselves don't make a ton of sense, and the tone is wildly inconsistent. The worst part is that every so often there's a sliver of a moment when it is almost a good movie.  You can see where it could have turned away from stupidity (by, say, not changing plots again, or by not making Dudley Moore suddenly the focus) and been something actually good.  Erin pointed out while we were watching it that every time it started to look serious or magical or otherwise interesting, in came the annoying repetitive cartoon music and the slapstick-prone elves. I should mention that these are some mighty unconvincing elves.  The height and behavior isn't consistent at all.  It also didn't help that all the toys the elves make look ridiculous, so whe

Growing up, I always hated He-Man.  Everything about the show repulsed me; I'm not entirely sure why.  I certainly liked other bad cartoons, but something about He-Man just felt wrong. Well, I'm older now, and am no longer disturbed by the program.  Actually, I really enjoyed the 2002 reboot .  Sorry - I'm getting off topic. The point is, The He-Man & She-Ra Christmas Special wasn't part of my childhood.  The first time I saw it was at a Christmas party a few years back.  The second was last night on Hulu. Placed firmly in the "so bad it's good camp," I have to admit this is really entertaining.  I mean, yeah, it's awful.  Really, really awful.  But it's also hilarious. The story - to the extent the term applies - follows the misadventures of Orco, as he accidentally teleports a few children from Earth to Eternia.  The kids tell everyone about Christmas, which pisses off Horde-Prime, who seems to be the overlord of an evil empire. H

We found this episode on an old VHS tape while visiting Lindsay's family for Thanksgiving and popped it in.  I don't know about Lindsay, but I was expecting this to make me want to find something hard to bash my head against. But, much to my surprise, I wound up liking it quite a bit.  Lindsay described it as "charming," which I think wraps it up nicely.  While it's not about to become one of my all-time favorite specials, it was well worth the half-hour it took to watch. Sure, it was aimed at a young audience, but the jokes were well orchestrated.  The story had a decent number of twists and turns which, while simple enough for five year-olds to follow, didn't feel stupid or random . The music, which I'm assuming appears in every episode, complimented the children's book animation style.  What really made this stand out, was the depiction of Santa and his shop.  I haven't seen this take before, and it feels simultaneously origin

I never had cable growing up, so "A Disney Channel Christmas" isn't a special I'm familiar with.  Apparently, Disney has been re-cutting and adjusting this since 1958, when it was called "From All of Us to All of You."  The version I saw, expanded to a numbing hour and a half, was released in 1983 and titled "A Disney Channel Christmas." To today's viewers, most of this plays like an extended commercial for Disney DVDs.  It's easy to forget that most of the movies and clips featured wouldn't have been available for sale when this aired.  For a number of viewers, this would have served as an introduction to characters and movies they wouldn't see for years.  Now, the clips feel bizarre and esoteric.  Scenes from Pinocchio, Snow White, and Cinderella are included, despite the fact there's no discernible connection to the holidays or even winter. The shorts are far more interesting.  I particularly enjoyed "Donald's Sn

Man, I loved this when I was a kid. We had the Disney Channel when I was little, back when it was the channel that showed wall-to-wall old Disney Cartoons and "tween" programming wasn't yet a glimmer in a marketing director's eye. I watched all the Disney Channel Holiday Specials.  There was one for Christmas, and one for Halloween hosted by the Magic Mirror from Snow White, and one for Valentine's Day, and maybe some that I'm forgetting.  They are essentially themed clip shows, but sometimes it would be the only time you would see some of these bits. There were three main types of content spliced together to make this special, so I'm going to talk about each in turn: 1) Material from Movies This is the least interesting part for me now, and I don't remember it much from watching as a kid, so maybe it bored me then too.  A few of the pieces fit the theme well, especially the skating scene from Bambi and the Waltz of the Flowers from Fantasia.