Directed by Arthur Rankin Jr. & Jules Bass
Starring Billie Mae Richards, Jackie Vernon, and Paul Frees
Y’all know me. I love this time of year. The holiday season. Every year I have a catalog of Christmas films and specials I watch, and a lot of them are from the Rankin-Bass Studio.
If you don’t know who I'm taking about, they’re the people behind Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer, Santa Claus Is Comin’ To Town, The Year Without a Santa Claus, and so on. Their stop-motion ‘animagic’ specials have been ingrained into the DNA of the holiday season forever. Their popularity has never faded. So, it amazes me no one in Hollywood has tried to cash in on them and reboot a cinematic universe out of them (But please, Hollywood. Don’t...unless you can let me do it.)
You think I’m wacky but Rankin & Bass really did have this sort of cinematic universe with their holiday specials. Many of them existed in the same continuity. Events from one special were referenced in the next, several characters would appear across specials, often voiced by the same actor (Mickey Rooney was Santa for Comin’ To Town, Year Without, and the subject of today’s proceedings).
What I’m getting at is, Rankin & Bass did try to tie all these specials together in a major crossover event film, Rudolph & Frosty’s Christmas In July, starring their two most popular characters as the title suggests. It was released theatrically (briefly, and not very successfully) before making its way to television, where it would re-air annually along with the rest of the Rankin-Bass Holiday Catalog. This would be the final time they would animate either Rudolph or Frosty, before other studios adapted their work.
But is this special one of Rankin & Bass’s greatest? One of their weirdest? One of their worst? I say, “Why not all three?”
The story opens with a prologue narrated by Santa (Rooney), who tells the audience once the North Pole was ruled by a wicked sorcerer by the name of Winterbolt (Voiced by Rankin-Bass veteran Paul Frees, and not to be confused with the other five characters with “Winter” in their name). Tired of watching his cruelty, the Aurora Borealis (Nellie Bellflower) takes human form to put a stop to Winterbolt’s rule by putting him in a deep sleep.
However, taking human form sadly puts an expiration date on Lady Borealis’s time and magic in the North. Winterbolt eventually awakens many years later, after Santa, Mrs. Claus and their elves have set up shop. Seeing Santa as a threat to his rule, Winterbolt decides to get rid of him.
Now stay with me because I promise this is going to pay off in a second. Winterbolt’s plan is to create a horrible storm on the upcoming Christmas Eve, so Santa will become hopelessly lost in the fog, and Winterbolt can take his place as the Patriarch of the North and in the hearts of children everywhere (How this creepy bastard plans to achieve that second part is beyond any of us). So...with her time drawing to a close, Lady Borealis decides to leave behind some of her magic to protect Santa. She bestows it to a newborn reindeer, whose nose will glow a bright, blinding red whenever he thinks good thoughts.
Yes, dear reader. Rudolph’s shiny red-nosed glows with the light of the Aurora Borealis, and was a supernatural, preventative measure to protect Santa Claus “one foggy Christmas Eve” from a wicked warlock.
Winterbolt learns of Rudolph and turns his sights on getting rid of the red-nosed reindeer’s power. It’s kind of hard to explain how Frosty (Vernon), his wife and kids, and a struggling circus by-the-sea gets all intertwined into this story without flat-out summarizing the whole film. Perhaps there lies its greatest flaw. It’s needlessly complicated for a film about Christmas characters. Don’t get me wrong it’s very creative and I appreciate the idea of trying to give a mythology to Rudolph’s nose. But Winterbolt’s plan is way too convoluted, and relies far too much on coincidence. Think Luthor’s plan in Batman VS Superman or Zemo’s in Captain America: Civil War, but even less concrete. He’s almost making it up as he goes...no wait he actually is. There are scenes where he in fact is making it up as he goes.
I know Rankin & Bass probably weren’t setting out to make a cinematic universe when they made the original Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer or even when they made Rudolph & Frosty, but they inadvertently did and just for chuckles let’s comment on it a little bit on it. The continuity is good but it's weak. Like Rudolph grew up his first special, but every appearance afterward he’s a kid/young adult again. Also (Spoiler? It came out in 1979 deal with it) Frosty loses his magic hat and everyone acts like he’s lost forever but previous specials have shown that the hat is not the only method of reviving him. Such as a kiss from his wife. Who’s standing right there. Who did it the first night they met. Heck, even in this special itself there are plot holes, where they don’t follow their own rules. I don’t know. Maybe I just expect more from my Christmas specials…
Kids will enjoy these characters together on screen and working against some bad guys. Older viewers will understand it well enough to know what’s going on. Honestly the concept of this film has always fascinated me. I had a VHS of it when I was younger and I understood it, and watched it every season, despite it being darker than other Rankin-Bass fare. Now that I’m older as I watch it I perform like a mental creative-writing exercise on how to make this a better script (No I still haven’t figured it out but hey now I have the downtime).
The animation is great as we’d expect from this studio, some of the set-pieces are really impressive. You can see how far they’ve come from the original Rudolph. It is cool to see Frosty and his side of the universe translate well into stop-motion (Frosty is always in traditional animation). The voice acting is top-notch as always. Richards and Vernon are the definitive voices of the titular characters. Mickey Rooney is still a top-tier Santa. Paul Frees is great as Winterbolt and few other supporting players. Ethel Merman is fun as Lily Lorainne, owner of the circus. Shelley Winters returns as Frosty’s wife Crystal and she has this nice, sweet-but-firm maternal quality for the character. Finally, Alan Sues (Whom I know nothing about but he sounds like Andy Dick) is positively grating as...Scratcher the Reindeer.
As one would expect with any Rankin-Bass production this is a musical. The reprisals of the titular character’s anthems are nice. The rest of the songs are just...pretty forgettable? None of them really do anything to move the plot forward but some of them are pretty nice. I mean if you have Ethel Merman I guess you should have her sing. There’s “I See Roses”, a nice love song that Santa sings to Mrs Claus which I always liked, and “No Bed of Roses” which is a touching (?) little lament when Rudolph (Spoilers. Again, 1979.) hits his low point in the film.
Those that are close to me have heard me hype Rudolph & Frosty’s Christmas-In-July up in the past. But I really can’t say it’s good...or bad, really. It’s interesting to watch unfold. Like quality fan-fiction. There’s definitely a nostalgia factor to it. The animation is great. The performances are enjoyable. A lot of what you probably read here gave off a “You need to see it to believe it” vibe, and I’d say that’s accurate. If you like all the other holiday specials from Rankin & Bass, and are looking for something new to watch during the holidays, this might be worth a watch. Who knows? Maybe it’ll become part of your annual holiday watchlist...or not. Yeah, this film’s pretty iffy. Anyway, Merry December 27th everyone!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment