If you're a Disney fan and feeling the holiday spirit, here are six animated festive flicks to check out. Two or three of them are pretty good - the rest deserve a lump of coal to the side of the head.
Reviewing - Disney's Christmas Collection
Mickey's Christmas Carol (***1/2)
My first Christmas flick this year thankfully proved to be much better than ‘Mickey’s Once Upon A Christmas’.
A product of the 80s, I expected the animation to be more or less lacklustre – given that most of Disney’s theatrical 80s films didn’t quite have the aesthetic zing and pop that came along with the Renaissance Era. I was pleasantly surprised, though – Mickey and the gang are wonderfully animated. Tiny Tim in particular was ADORABLE. It was really fun to see Disney pull old characters off of the shelves to re-tell this story. I wouldn’t have recognized a number of them if it weren’t for the fact that I recently re-watched all the old Disney classics.
They’ve compressed the Christmas Carol story into twenty-two minutes or so, but nothing ever feels rushed. It moves along at a natural and fun pace, never lingering for too long on one scene. The one scene though that stands out to me was Scrooge McDuck trying to avoid falling straight into hell. I did not see that coming, but wow, that was fun for a few seconds.
I’ve seen a number of short Christmas films by now, and to be honest, this is one of the best I’ve reviewed. Give it a shot!
Winnie the Pooh: A Very Merry Pooh Year (***)
In which Eeyore spontaneously grows a full set of teeth
This is definitely a kid's movie, but Winnie is so charming you won't care.
Not too long ago I reviewed "The Lion Guard: Return of the Roar" because the original "The Lion King" is my favourite movie of all time, and I didn't want people thinking I wasn't committed to that statement in every sense of the word. I said in that review that there's a difference between family movies and kid's movies. A family movie has poignance and heart for kids and adults alike. There are things that adults will pick up on that the kids will miss, but there's plenty of stuff for the kids to enjoy. While I'd classify "The Lion King" as a family movie on that basis, "The Lion Guard" is for kids in that there isn't much of anything for adults to take in.
This Christmas special is a kid's movie because there's nothing in here that an adult will find particularly remarkable. Nothing, that is, except for the charm and delight of the character of Winnie The Pooh. The plot is simple and the moral is obvious, but Winnie is just so darn adorable that I actually had a good time watching this. Jim Cummings, the voice of Pooh, has such an iconic timbre to his voice. Pooh is an enigma because he sounds simple-minded just as often as he sounds very wise. There's just something about his cadence and intonation that makes you feel right at home. And although Winnie steals his own show, the same can be said of all of the characters. Tigger, Piglet, and Eeyore all add their signature flair, resulting in a kid's Christmas story that is greater than the sum of its parts. I was surprised at how much I genuinely enjoyed my time watching this.
If Winnie the Pooh doesn't do anything for you, then I guess this is thoroughly skippable. But if you're looking for a small smackerel of something sweet, this will do the trick.
Olaf’s Frozen Adventure (**)
In which fruitcake plays a major role
If you hate Olaf, skip this.
That said, I’m not a big fan of the little guy myself, but he managed to make me smile once or twice. And the rousing song at the end of this short film was enough for me to say, “They actually did a good job on this thing”. The animation is terrific, which is to be expected given Disney’s reputation. Elsa’s fur trimming at the collar of her dress was particularly impressive. But at the end of the day, this was fairly cheesy and never really had anything to get really excited about. It’s kid-friendly to the max, to the point where none of the characters ever stand to lose anything of particular significance.
But hey, if your kid loves Frozen, this’ll keep ‘em quiet for a few minutes.
Mickey’s Once Upon A Christmas (**1/2)
In which Mickey and Minnie both receive thoroughly useless gifts
I watched this for the first time in 2019, so I didn’t have any nostalgia goggles through which to view it. Maybe that’s why I didn’t love it so much.
The animation is nothing to write home about. The colours are flat and two-dimensional, which I suppose isn’t worth crying over, but come on. This came out in 1999. We already had films packed with vibrant and 3D-inspired colouring like The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast, and Tarzan. Shading and a variety of colours on one subject can really make a character pop, and they kind of skimped out on that.
The first two segments aren’t that exciting either. Huey, Dewey, and Louie wish Christmas to happen every day, and it goes literally exactly as you’d expect it to from beginning to end. There’s nothing new or super-fun about it, and when the same joke gets told over and over again, it helps if the joke was funny the first time around. And why are a family of ducks eating a turkey?! If they had made a joke about it, I could have gotten over it, but they all just pretended that it was no big deal! That’s CANNIBALISM!
The second segment was a bit more heartfelt, but it really threw me off towards the end because of a continuity error. Goofy is staying up all night to try and find Santa, and Max is being kept awake by his shenanigans. We see Max’s alarm clock move through the hours of the night – and then all of a sudden, the segment cuts to a shot of Max sleeping, and the clock has moved backwards in time. Immediately, I thought, “Oh, okay, so he’s dreaming”. For everything that followed, I figured it was all happening in Max’s head, and my assumption was that he would meet Santa in some way before waking up to find that it had all been a dream – or had it?
But then it turned out that it wasn’t a dream. Santa actually did show up and make something appear out of the sky. But what’s the point of that? Is the point that kids just need to believe no matter what? Because if so, Max got something that other kids will never get – the chance to see Santa flying through the sky and making presents materialize out of thin air. How are kids expected to believe even when they don’t see? That’s the question I was hoping this segment would answer, and it fell short.
The third segment saved this film for me. It’s the reason I gave it two-and-a-half stars instead of just two. It’s a story I’ve heard before, but they told it earnestly and with grace. Mickey and Minnie are heartfelt and thoroughly likeable characters in this segment, and you can’t help but root for them when things start to turn south. Their sacrifice for each other is sweet, ironic, heartwarming, and funny all at once. My wife didn’t like that they ended up with ‘useless’ gifts, but I do really believe it’s the thought that counts. They made the right call in saving this segment for last, because it’s the only present under the tree worth keeping.
Mickey’s Twice Upon A Christmas (1/2)
In which the MarioKart app on my phone was more interesting than the movie
The original was already bad. This was significantly worse.
Didn’t “The Incredibles” come out in 2004? How could something THAT impressive animation-wise have been achieved while this film languished in failure? Why are Mickey’s ears so small? Why make the shift to 3D at all if you weren’t ready for it?
Every single plot line was uninteresting - I ended up playing Mario Kart on my phone instead of watching the film. Any time I heard something of note taking place, I looked up only to be assaulted by the mediocre animation style.
Boy, this was a waste of time. Can’t believe I sat through this whole thing.
Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas (**)
In which a guy decides he'd rather be an organ chained to a wall for eternity than a human being
It looks pretty but feels weird.
The first thing I thought about this follow-up to one of Disney’s all-time masterpieces was that the quality of the animation deserved a nod. As a proud Canadian, I was happy to learn that this film was animated wonderfully by fellow Canucks. The characters look like themselves, and the attention to detail in shading and colouring bears all the marks of Disney excellence. The only animation that I wasn’t a fan of was to be found in Forte, the film’s CGI villain. Whereas other films of the era managed to seamlessly integrate CGI into traditional animation, Forte stuck out like a sore thumb. It didn’t help that his character was always literally chained to one spot - he never benefited from a change of scenery. But apart from him, this movie was visually enjoyable.
The plot is exactly what you’d expect from a direct-to-video sequel (as are the songs, I might add), but what was a bit on the weird side for me was the tense relationship between Belle and the Beast. We’ve all heard about the potential “Stockholm Syndrome” present in the original film, but what helps in that case is the fact that we get to see the Beast be kind to Belle on several occasions - and that there’s a musical montage of the two falling in love. This time around, we watch the Beast really ruin Belle’s day multiple times. Belle doesn’t really stand up for herself in response - in fact, she constantly pivots and adapts in order to try and make the Beast happy. Even when the Beast locks her in a dungeon (for trying to do something nice, I might add), she’s quick to forgive. Even as a Christian, it’s hard to get behind this behaviour. Being kind does not mean being a floor mat. Belle has no obligation to put up with the abuse the Beast dishes out. If they were married, I would at least be able to say “she’s doing it to save their relationship”, but in this case he is purely her captor. She should not be okay with this, but she lets it happen anyway. Not cool.
Belle is my favourite Disney princess, but that isn’t enough to make me glaze over the errors (musical and otherwise) of this film. That said, there aren’t many other Disney-Christmas-princess stories to pick from.