Rankin/bass - Tumblr Posts

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!

@pilferingapples I saw you try to hide this in the tags:

And yes, I absolutely agree. As someone who absolutely dislikes the original song, I get a little annoyed that people use pictures from the Rankin/Bass special to criticize the song’s lyrics, because the special does a lot to fix most of the issues with the song. Just the fact that there’s a whole scene of the characters apologizing to Rudolph and Hermie a while before the storm has become an issue makes it clear that they aren’t just saying they like Rudolph because they need him. It’s almost as though director Romeo Muller looked at the original song and story, said, “Hey, wait a minute…” and went out of his way to fix that specific issue.

(If anything, Rudolph’s Shiny New Year is a lot worse with its message, although I suspect I don’t see as many people complaining about that due to it being less popular.)

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

Keep reading

Been drawing this cute little cinnamon roll all December. This is some character study of Jack Frost from one of the Rankin/Bass Christmas specials, Frosty's Winter Wonderland. So I draw him and some ideas popped up here and there like the icicle claws came when I was watching Wednesday. Then I got @emiimagination interested in the Frosty shorts and the other Christmas specials and we came up with an AU for our reinterpretation of the R/B Christmas specials cinematic universe. And yes the E.T chest glowing is part of the AU. I had traditional pencils to color with. I'm not too displeased about the colour rendering ^^. So yeah I'm posting the drawings I've already made (hope to post more if more comes).

RISE OF THE GUARDIANS (Dir: Peter Ramsey, 2012).

What would get if you crossed Marvel’s Avengers with a 1970s Rankin/Bass holiday special? Probably something not too dissimilar to DreamWorks Animation’s Rise of the Guardians as Santa, the Easter Bunny, the Toothfairy, the Sandman and new recruit Jack Frost assemble Avengers-style to defeat evil Pitch Black, aka The Boogeyman, as he attempts to take over the world by filling children’s heads with nightmares and suppressing their belief in the ‘Guardians’, threatening the imminent Easter celebrations to boot.

Director Peter Ramsey’s movie is action adventure on an epic scale rarely seen in animation. The glib humour and pop culture references that often mired DreamWorks’ early features is thankfully absent here. Certainly there is humour, yet there is also pathos, as when Jack learns of his forgotten past and why he was chosen as a Guardian.

With genuinely exciting action set pieces and excellent voice work from a star studded line up including Chris Pine, Alec Baldwin, Hugh Jackman, Isla Fisher and Jude Law, it is difficult to see how Rise of the Guardians could fail at the box office. But fail it did. Much to the detriment of cinema audiences who possibly found the Christmas/Easter mash-up aspect unappealing. Perhaps its winter release date was also misjudged, although it is certainly the most Christmassy of Easter movies.

While perhaps not quite in the same league as their ‘How to Train Your Dragon’ and ‘Kung Fu Panda’ franchises, Rise of the Guardians is still one of DreamWorks’s best movies to date. Its visuals are often breathtaking and its nod to vintage Rankin/Bass shows, where Santa is as likely to crop up in an Easter or a Groundhog Day special as he is a Christmas one, gives it a nice nostalgic feel befitting of a movie which deals with childhood and tradition. While this movie was designed as a franchise opener, Rise of the Guardians was destined to remain a one off. As a stand-alone feature film it is an often exciting, warm-hearted treat and is highly recommend viewing at Easter, Christmas or any other time of year.

Visit my blog JINGLE BONES MOVIE TIME for more movie reviews! Link below.

KLAUS (Dir: Sergio Pablos, 2019)

Just when you think you have seen all the Santa origin stories you care to, along comes Klaus. Netflix’s first original animated feature film, Klaus made its debut on the streaming service in November 2019; an early gift for the festive season. Produced by Sergio Pablos Animation Studios, it is the directorial debut of studio head Pablos, the co-creator of Universal's highly lucrative Despicable Me franchise.

Incompetent postman Jesper (Jason Schwartzman) is sent by his Postmaster General father to establish a post office in the remote northern isle of Smeerensburg. On arrival he finds a divided community, engaged in a bitter feud, who barely speak to each other, let alone send mail. Determined to succeed he seeks out each town member to extol the virtues of the postal service, including Klaus (J K Simmons), a mysterious, solitary figure with a workshop full of toys. The pair team up to distribute the toys to the unhappy Smeerensburg children, creating some new Christmas traditions along the way.

Klaus is as warm and heartfelt as you would expect a Christmas movie to be. Sure, it is sentimental, but never slushy and with genuine pathos in Klaus' backstory. Its distinctive visual style and expressionistic use of colour help make it one of the most visually pleasing animated features in recent years; the 2D animation combines the slickness that audiences would expect of a modern animated feature with a cartoony style reminiscent of the Mid Century Modern stylings of the UPA animation studios.

While Klaus does cover some similar ground to the Rankin/Bass TV favourite Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town (Arthur Rankin Jr & Jules Bass, 1970), in all other respects it is easily the most imaginative take on St Nick's early years for sometime.

In a year where cinema release schedules have been dominated by animated sequels, first time director Sergio Pablos has crafted a movie which feels fresh and original, yet reassuringly tradition. It is arguably the most satisfying Christmas movie of the decade and seems destined to become a holiday classic.

Visit my blog jinglebonesmovietime.blogspot.com for 100+ movie reviews! Link below.