Christmas Is Here Again

---

Tools:
Recommend review to a friend »

---

With a voice cast that includes Edward Asner, Kathy Bates, Jay Leno, Brad Garrett, Shirley Jones, and Andy Griffith, a film like "Christmas is Here Again" ought to be a runaway success, not a movie that makes you want to run away. But in an attempt to touch just about every Christmassy base, this animated film from Robert Zappia ends up being so far out you'd think it was made by Frank Zappa. It's like the holiday Jell-O mold with too much fruit and marshmallows dumped into it, when a little would have been just fine, thank you.

There's a wide-eyed orphan, an extroverted elf, Santa and his wife, a Rudolph-style reindeer, a fox, a polar bear, and a hunched over villain who wears Halloween colors and looks a bit like the Grim Reaper. Lumps of coal make an appearance, but they're mined by children who are recruited and transformed by this villain, Krag (Asner). The kids are forced to work underground, though I was never clear about what the relationship was between mining all this coal and Santa's sack of toys, so I can imagine what little ones were thinking. But the gist of this film is that Santa's sack, which is magical, has been stolen, effectively canceling Christmas for almost 30 years.

Wow. You'd think one year would be bad enough.

And as if Zappia felt the need to somehow connect the secular Christmas icons and the birth of Christ, he brings in Bible verses and the Nativity story. It turns out that Santa's sack got its magic because it was made from the swaddling cloth that covered baby Jesus in the manger, and so the giving of Christmas gifts by Saint Nicholas is a reminder of Christ's gift to the world.

Now, I'm sure that many people will find this clever combination appealing, and I'd probably feel more gracious about it if it weren't for that business with the villain and his coal mining children. It's hard to watch those sequences without thinking of "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" and all those poor hijacked kids. It's downright creepy, even though the kids in "Christmas is Here Again" are Selves, naughty children who only thought of themselves who were recruited by the Krad and turned into hooded faceless minions to work the mines. Kind of like the kids who go to Pleasure Island in "Pinocchio." In fact, as you watch this film, you'll find a number of déjà vu moments, with echoes of "Miracle on 34th Street," "A Christmas Carol," "Annie," "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," "How the Grinch Stole Christmas," and all sorts of films.

Thankfully there's Grinch-like adventures, all drawn in the style of today's Cartoon Network shows, with a plot that harkens back to the old claymation Rudolph, Frosty, and Santa Christmas specials that delighted Baby Boomer children. And in fairness, some of those Rankin-Bass cartoons had some pretty far-fetched kitchen-sink plots too. The style of animation in "Christmas is Here Again" is one of the livelier aspects of this 74-minute Christmas cartoon, and the music isn't bad either, although when you have someone like Jones doing the warbling there's a bit more vibrato than you'd think Mrs. Claus capable of, and Griffith's and Asner's singing isn't terribly impressive. Still, the happy music (not the villainous tunes) takes a little of the edge off, and as such it's an important part of the story.

At the heart of this animated feature is a disabled girl named Sophianna (Madison Davenport, "Kit Kittredge") who lives in an orphanage run by Miss Dowdy (Bates, of course--who else?). With a cane to help her walk, she's like a feminist Cartoon Network version of Tiny Tim who's been crushed time and again on Adoption Day, always passed over. Though this little girl has plenty of faith and spirit, one day after listening to Mrs. Claus sing to the kids about how they can be anything they want, she gets dejected and goes into the forest. There, she finds an elf frozen in a block of ice and rescues him. Paul Rocco (Daniel Roebuck) tells how he was Santa's chief helper, but that when the sack turned up missing on his watch he felt compelled to look for it. A 30-year search?

---

---