There are few movies with which I have a more mixed reaction than Return of the Jedi.
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Return of the Jedi (1983)
Month: December 2021
Read the full review here.
This is the rare childhood favorite that just gets better and better as I get older.
Read the expanded review here
It’s great for all the reasons you remember: Seuss’s verses are wonderful and whimsical; Jones’ animation is colorful and playful (the faces!); Karloff is perfect as the narrator and Grinch; Ravenscroft’s baritone insults are a hoot; and the warm holiday ending is a great payoff on a fun reverse-Santa story.
I’ll probably be watching this every winter for the rest of my life.
Everyone who is panning this should watch Olaf Presents or Once Upon a Snowman to see how dismal Olaf shorts can be.
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A Christmas Carol (1971)
Richard Williams’ 1971 Oscar-winning short is an astonishing adaptation, animated with beautiful, pencil-drawn grace and showcasing the creepier side of the story.
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Santa’s Workshop (1932)
Note: I viewed both the 2019 remaster on Disney+ and the earlier version on YouTube
Santa’s Workshop is a historically important, technically accomplished, visually appealing animated short that’s quite the holiday delight. There’s tons of energy and color in the motion of making and delivering Christmas gifts, with some great sound design. Using Schubert as backing music adds a lot of richness.
Unfortunately…
I’m docking a rating point for both the blatant racism (blackface doll, scrubbed away in the 2019 remaster), and the subdued racism (“Oriental”-looking dolls). I get that the 1930s were a different time, but even with that context it’s tough to watch.
Another point docked for Disney not giving us an easy way to view the original. I understand the appeal for this to be a timeless toon, and therefore the need to have a modern version that reflects our values better. Frankly, as a parent, I’m grateful for it, because I can show it to my kids with minimal guilt.
But I am super NOT okay with Disney doing anything to obfuscate this process or make it difficult for enthusiasts/historians to watch the original.
The challenge with Winnie the Pooh-type whimsy is that if you don’t calibrate the tone just right, it can be an unbearable slog, tedious and treacly and dopey.
This is my favorite Christmas Carol adaptation and one of my favorite Christmas movies, period.
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A Christmas Carol (1938)
Every Christmas Carol adaptation has its own personality trait, and this early Code-era rendition is just so damn cheery.
You may as well call it “A Tale of Two Carols” because I’m not sure any Christmas Carol adaptation has given me more whiplash between the two poles of its craft.
On the one hand, this is one of the best pieces of storytelling for most of its runtime among any of the Christmas Carol adaptations I’ve seen. It leans heavily on the Dickens text to great effect, using the reality-defying nature of animation to capture vivid details of the novella usually ignored on film.
And some of the visual designs are truly marvelous. It goes to show what a visionary director with a big budget and great team can create with the material. From the creepy door knocker and Marley ghost, to the sprawling dormitory at Scrooge’s school, to the streetlife panorama element of Christmas Present usually ignored in adaptations, to — most memorably of all — the half-shadow Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come — there’s so much I loved in this.
Truly, this film does exciting horror-tinged stuff with Christmas Carol material that has never been matched in other adaptations.
And yet…
It’s all packaged in the ass-ugly mo-cap CGI that looks like a PS2 cutscene. Some of these character models and textures are absolutely wretched to look at (the Ace Ventura-looking Ghost of Christmas Past might be the worst, but there are a lot of contenders).
More distracting still is that plenty of scenes are designed like a 3D thrill ride more than a piece of cinema. It’s extremely jarring to hop from a tense/moving moment to a wacky flight simulator. Why Christmas Yet To Come had to spend 7 minutes in a goofy chase scene, shrinking Scrooge to mouse size, I’ll never understand.
Scrooge himself looks quite good (you can tell they spent the time and technical budget on him), though Carrey’s vocal performance is mediocre, maybe approaching average.
The film starts promising and had me engaged, but gradually loses its emotional thread as the movie does more and more tech demo-type stuff. Alas, I’m left with quite a bit of cognitive dissonance about the whole thing and can’t give it a strong recommendation.