Ranking All The Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer Specials

Ranking All the Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer Specials

So, I’m in the process of finishing the script for a review of all the Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer specials. However, I don’t know if I will realistically be able to complete my video before Christmas, so here is my ranking of every Rudolph special, from best to worst.

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964): Despite all the memes (“Deviation from the norm will be punished unless it is exploitable!”), the original Rankin/Bass Rudolph special holds up much better than most of the internet gives it credit for. It has memorable characters and songs, it is well-paced and does not try to cram too many subplots into its runtime, its stop-motion animation was quite good for the time (and has a unique charm nowadays), and it actually fixes most of the issues with the original song and story. It’s a classic. 9.5/10

Rudolph’s Shiny New Year (1976): The follow-up to the Rankin/Bass special is not as good as the first one, and the lesson of “If people laugh at you, it’s because you bring them joy and that’s a good thing!” is kind of reprehensible, but it’s still pretty alright. It certainly has some nice songs and creative ideas, and Red Skelton is charming as Father Time, although I can see why it didn’t become a holiday staple like the first one. For one thing, it’s less well-paced, and doubling it as a New Year’s special and as a celebration of America’s Bicentennial felt stranger. Still pretty good. 7/10

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1948): This Max Fleischer short aired a year before the song’s release and thus is more closely based on the original Rudolph story. The animation is kind of janky (as a lot of Max Fleischer’s shorts are in hindsight, even though he was an animation pioneer) and the story is a bit standard, but it’s still a decent short film and a noble enough screen debut for the character. 6/10

Rudolph and Frosty’s Christmas in July (1979): Rankin/Bass pulled out all of the stops for this big epic crossover film between Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Frosty the Snowman, and Santa Claus Is Coming to Town, their own Avengers: Endgame that also doubled as a sendoff for Rudolph and Frosty, who would never star in a Rankin/Bass project after this. However, despite some creative ideas, the plot felt all over the place, with far too many subplots and too much lore to keep track of, plus we did not need a explanation for Rudolph’s nose powers. We could have accepted it as simply being “magic,” and making him a chosen one poses more questions than it answers. Still, at least it was imaginative, which is more than I can say for the post-Rankin/Bass specials. 5.5/10

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer: The Movie (1998): GoodTimes Entertainment’s attempt at rebooting the franchise has diminishing returns, and reeks of the usual GoodTimes stench. The plot beats and characters felt very derivative of the original Rankin/Bass special, as a lot of GoodTimes movies feel derivative of other films, but this one felt even more obvious since even the songs themselves felt derivative of songs from the first Rankin/Bass one. And the $10 million budget clearly didn’t go to the writing or animation, so I have to wonder where it went. Presumably to the voice cast, and while it does bring in some well-known voice actors (including John Goodman, Whoopi Goldberg, Debbie Reynolds, and Monty Python’s Eric Idle), they cannot save this special from mediocrity. 4/10

Rudolph’s Lessons for Life (1996): There’s a reason this special has been forgotten and isn’t even mentioned on Wikipedia. I only found out about it thanks to TV Tropes. Rudolph’s Lessons for Life feels like a remake of Max Fleischer’s Rudolph short, but a lot worse. At least the Fleischer short was good for the time. This special’s framerate feels like a PowerPoint presentation at points. The only copies that exist of this special are 240p VHS rips, so don’t bother watching unless you are a serious Rudolph completionist. 2/10

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and the Island of Misfit Toys (2001): GoodTimes Entertainment’s second attempt at a Rudolph movie, this one continues from the original Rankin/Bass special and ignores the two sequels. This movie easily has the worst animation of all of them, summoning memories of Foodfight! to mind, and even if you look past the animation, it’s seriously uninspired. The plot lifts beats from the original Rankin/Bass special, and the villain is ripped from Toy Story 2. Perhaps the only decent plot element is a subplot about an island where toys can get plastic surgery? But even then, it’s wasted because they do nothing with it. And the celebrity voice cast--including Richard Dreyfuss, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Rick Moranis--do nothing to help. This is bad. Awful. Burn it. Purge it with fire. 1/10

And that’s my ranking! What do you guys think? Leave your own rankings in the comments below, feel free to discuss if you have any questions, and look out for my review sometime next month!

Some belated Halloween art of my girls Al, Sabrina, and Reilly in Halloween costumes!

If you recognize this drawing, that is because this a remake of this old thing from 2019! I just thought it deserved some better coloring and shading for the new year, particularly with things opening up again.

Characters and art © me

And feel free to support me on Patreon!

Black cats are lucky. (via leahweissmuller)

It’s catboy summer, everyone.

A void going off into the stratosphere 🐱🎸🌌💙

Made for me boy @thehappyspaceman, who graduated from college yesterday :3

Serious question.

Would any of you be interested in me setting up an alternate account here for art (SFW and NSFW)?

Twitter is looking like more and more of a bust, and I’d really like to get back into art, maybe even start taking commissions to make some money.

Coming soon!