A Flintstone Christmas

Premiered December 7, 1977.  

"It's my favorite time of the year

It's that magical time of good cheer

I guess part of the reason's

The heart of the season

Of Christmas is practically here."
-sung by Fred Flintstone

Christmas has come to the town of Bedrock and Fred Flintstone (Henry Corden) and Barney Rubble (Mel Blanc) are excited about the holiday season.  

Their wives Wilma (Jean Vander Pyl) and Betty (Gay Hartwig) are organizing the Ladies Auxiliary Party for the Bedrock Orphanage.  They want Fred to play Santa Claus at the party, but Fred refuses.  He says his co-workers would never let him live it down.  When Fred goes to work, his boss Mr. Slate summons Fred into his office.  Slate says his wife also wants Fred to play Santa at the orphanage party.  Fred's fear of his boss is enough to convince him to play St. Nick.  

On Christmas Eve, Barney and Fred are preparing to go to the party, when they find a man in a Santa suit buried in a snowdrift in the Flintstone's yard.  He's sprained his ankle, has a bad cold and needs help.  The man claims to be the real Santa Claus!  

Fred and Barney think he's an escaped mental patient until they see Santa's sleigh and reindeer on the roof! 

Barney suggests that due to his injury, Santa should get a replacement to deliver gifts and nominates Fred.  Using Santa magic, he creates an elf suit for Barney and puts his suit on Fred.

Their worldwide journey is going fine until they encounter a blizzard.  The storm is so turbulent that it causes Santa's bag of toys to fall out of the sleigh!  

Fred and Barney contact Santa via CB radio and he tells them to fly to his North Pole workshop to collect more toys.  

Barney and Fred meet Mrs. Claus (Virginia Gregg) at the North Pole.

At the orphanage party, the children grow restless since Santa-Fred hasn't arrived.  The kids begin to chant "WE WANT SANTA," and Pebbles worries to Wilma that Santa won't come to the party.

Can Fred and Barney deliver all the presents in time to make it to the party?  

J.A. Morris says:

A Flintstone Christmas is a good, solid, enjoyable holiday special.  I bring some nostalgia to this review because I remember when this special first aired and I was excited about it at the time.  I enjoyed it then and it's still fun all these years later.  However, there are some problems with this special.

In Bedrock, even the pteranodons are feeling the Christmas Spirit!

The plot, which involves Fred substituting for Santa and delivering gifts, is mostly recycled from "Christmas Flintstone," which we reviewed here recently.  The primary difference is that Santa injures himself at the Flintstones' home and Barney accompanies Fred in the round-the-world sleighride. 

That's not the end of the world, since many viewers probably saw this special before watching the 1964 Christmas episode (myself included).  It's also worth noting that "Christmas Flintstone" featured a sleigh driven by flying rein-dinos, in A Flintstone Christmas, it's the traditional flying reindeer.  

Speaking of recycled material, A Flintstone Christmas re-uses three songs from A Christmas Story, a 1972 animated special produced by Hanna-Barbera.  "Which One Is The Real Santa Claus," "Sounds Of Christmas Day," and "Hope" were all featured in A Christmas Story.  It also features two new songs, "A Brand New Kind Of Christmas Song" and "It's Our Favorite Time Of Year" (H-B later re-used the latter song in Yogi's First Christmas).  

The biggest problem I have with A Flintstone Christmas isn't that it re-uses songs.  It's that it contains too many songs that don't really move the plot forward.  They don't relate to the story, they just...happen. 

For instance, during a Christmas street scene, Barney and Fred notice all the Santas working on sidewalks and in department stores and wonder which one is the real Santa.  This leads into their performance of "Which One Is The Real Santa Claus."  It's not a bad song, but it leads to nothing and isn't relevant to the rest of the story.  It would have been easy to have a "call-back" to the song when the real Santa Claus shows up at Fred's house, but that never happens.  

The same can be said for the rest of the songs.  It just feels like the musical numbers are inserted to pad out the special's running time.  "Hope" is the only song that relates to the story, since Wilma sings it when her daughter Pebbles doubts Santa will come.  

Having said all that, it's still a decent special.  If you're a fan of the Flintstones, the Rubbles and their Modern Stone Age lives, you'll enjoy A Flintstone Christmas.  The voice actors all provide solid work.  Henry Corden plays Fred here, taking over for Fred's original portrayer Alan Reed.  Corden took over the role in 1977 and would continue to voice Fred until 1997.  Mel Blanc and Jean Vander Pyl were the original voices for Barney and Wilma, they're also good in this special. 

John Stephenson returns as Mr. Slate and it's always entertaining to hear him scream "FLINTSTONE!"  

Hal Smith, who voiced Santa in "Christmas Flintstone," also portrays him in this special.  

While A Flintstone Christmas is no classic, it's a light, fun and entertaining special.  Fans of Fred and Barney will enjoy watching them save Christmas (again) and the strong voice work makes it worth watching at least once.  There's a good 24-minute special here without all the songs.  The overreliance on songs that distract from the plot keeps me from giving it a higher rating.

J.A. Morris' rating:

.5

2 and a half candy canes.

RigbyMel says:

A Flintstone Christmas is a solid enough holiday special.   It's essentially a re-make of the 1964 "Christmas Flintstone" episode with a longer running time in which the trope of helping an injured Santa Claus save Christmas is re-revisited.  

As J.A. Morris says above, the voice talent is super strong in this episode.   The songs are pleasant enough -  I like the "Which One Is The Real Santa Claus?" song in particular - but really do feel like they exist to pad out the running time so the special will fit into an hour long slot (with commercial interruptions).   

This padding is underscored by some pretty obvious recycling of animation, particularly in the Santa's workshop sequence with the elvish activity.  

I was amused by the inclusion of the 1970s CB radio fad being used as a plot device so that Fred & Barney can communicate with Santa while making Santa's Christmas Eve delivery rounds.  

It's interesting to see how things like this that were popular at the time a special was made make their way into these types of programs. 

Fun fact:  According to Wikipedia,  Mel Blanc was an active CB radio fan and would often communicate with kids in the Los Angeles area in the voices of some of his many cartoon characters. 

A Flintstone Christmas is ... fine, but definitely not a holiday classic.  Still, kids will enjoy it as will fans of Hanna-Barbera animation, so it's worth watching at least once.  

RigbyMel's rating:

 

2 candy canes.

Reindeer Games

Premiered February 25, 2000.

This year's edition of "Oscar Takes A Holiday" concludes with our review of the Christmas-themed action movie Reindeer Games, which features two Academy Award Winners.

Charlize Theron won the Best Actress Oscar for Monster (2003).

Ben Affleck has never won an Academy Award for acting.  However, he won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for co-writing Good Will Hunting (1997) with Matt Damon.  Affleck later won the Best Picture Academy Award for co-producing Argo (2012) .

And now, here's our final Oscars-themed review of 2020!:

Car thief Rudy Duncan (Ben Affleck) and his cell mate Nick Cassidy (James Frain) are two days away from being released from prison.  Rudy is looking forward to hot chocolate, pecan pie and watching sports with his father.  

Nick has been corresponding with a woman named Ashley (Charlize Theron) and he plans to spend the upcoming Christmas season with her.  Unfortunately, Nick is killed in a prison riot just before his release date.

When Rudy is released, he sees Ashley waiting outside the prison and decides he will pretend to be Nick. They immediately fall for each other.  Rudy decides to wait until Christmas is over to tell her he isn't Nick.

Rudy's plans change when he's ambushed by several men.  The leader of the attack is Ashley's brother Gabriel (Gary Sinise), who is also known as "Monster."  Gabriel knows Nick worked as a security guard in a casino and thinks "Nick" will help him pull off a casino heist on Christmas Eve. Rudy attempts to tell Gabriel that he's not Nick and that he knows nothing about casinos.  However, Rudy changes his tune when a gun is pointed at his head.  He pretends to know about the casino's schematics and agrees to be part of the robbery.

Ashley confesses that she knew Gabriel would do this to Nick, but she expected Gabriel to wait until New Year's Eve.

Will Rudy go through with the robbery?  Will Gabriel discover that Rudy isn't Nick?   Will Rudy survive and make it to Christmas?

J.A. Morris says:

I really like the idea of a movie like Reindeer Games.  I have no problem with a "shoot-em-up" action/heist Christmas movie with a high body count.  There is room for every genre at Christmas time. The problem with Reindeer Games is that it's an idea that’s poorly executed and the story is a mess.  

Reindeer Games has lots of problems. One of the biggest problems is that Rudy's lie (about being Nick) leads to the death of an innocent ice fisherman when Rudy attempts to escape from Gabriel's gang.  Rudy later seems to forget about it.  That's just bad storytelling.  Reindeer Games also features multiple expositions where characters explain what there going to do while pointing guns in each other's faces and lots of double and triple-crosses.

It's too bad Reindeer Games wasn't better, because the talent in front of and behind the camera is amazing.  Director John Frankenheimer helmed a bunch of good movies, most notably Birdman Of Alcatraz, Seven Days In May and The Manchurian Candidate.  Sadly, Reindeer Games was Frankenheimer's last theatrical film.  

In spite of my general negative opinions about Reindeer Games, I don’t want to spoil the ending.  Let’s just say there’s a revelation late in the movie that’s a bit hard to believe even in the context of a big dumb action movie.  

In addition to the leads, the cast features a "Who's Who?" of great character actors: James Frain, Clarence Williams III, Danny Trejo and Donald Logue, Dennis Farina and Isaac Hayes. Unfortunately, these actors can't elevate the material they have to work with.

Reindeer Games features a great cast that is sadly wasted. It’s not recommended and I’m giving it our lowest rating.

J.A. Morris' rating:

A stocking full of coal.

Silly Symphonies: "Santa's Workshop" (1932) and "The Night Before Christmas" (1933)

"Santa's Workshop" premiered December 10, 1932.

"The Night Before Christmas" premiered  December 9, 1933.

We're going to depart a bit from our usual summary format, since these two connected cartoons don't have a lot of plot to summarize.

In "Santa's Workshop", we see elves making various toys, including rocking horses...

...dolls...

...and alphabet blocks.

Santa Claus (Allan Watson) goes through his naughty or nice list to see deserves a toy. His secretary (Pinto Colvig) informs him about how good or bad each child has been.

When all the toys are made and packed, Santa takes them to deliver toys to children around the world.

"The Night Before Christmas" picks up where "Santa's Workshop" left off.  It's a loose adaptation of the Clement Moore poem "A Visit From St. Nicholas."  Santa delivers toys, we see him make a stop at a house with nine children, sets up the Christmas tree and leaves gifts.

J.A. Morris says:

On a technical level, both cartoons are great.  Most cartoons at this time existed to say "hey, look what we can do with animation."  "Santa's Workshop" and "The Night Before Christmas" are a great example of this practice.  We get to see lots of details involved in how elves make the toys on an assembly line.

The colors are gorgeous and the  movements are nicely animated, but both shorts are a bit slight. There's not a lot of story in either.  Sure it's great animation, but not the sort of thing I plan to watch every December.

The other problem is that both "Santa's Workshop" and "The Night Before Christmas" feature some ugly ethnic stereotypes.  in the first cartoon, the elves making toys that feature blackface and stereotypical Jewish caricatures.  "The Night Before Christmas" short features a sweet moment when a little boy named Junior gets a puppy for Christmas.

This cute scene is undermined by Junior getting soot on his face, which makes it look like he's corked up in blackface.  I don't believe in censoring such things, but it took me out of the moment and feels odd and out of place, even for a 1933 cartoon.

Prancer receives a grooming.

Santa Claus' characterization is worth noting.  His physical appearance hasn't changed much since 1932.   However, other aspects of Santa were not yet codified when these cartoons were made. Instead of the familiar "ho-ho-ho," his laugh sounds more like "ha-ha-ha."  I guess Santa hadn't been codified when these shorts were produced.

"Santa's Workshop" and "The Night Before Christmas" are visually appealing, but the lack of story and reliance on racial stereotypes keeps me from giving them a higher rating.

J.A. Morris' rating:

.5


2 and a half Candy Canes.

RigbyMel says: 

Although there isn't a complicated story underlying these two shorts, there is a LOT of impressive animation on show.    We get to see the whole toy creation and delivery process across these two shorts.

Check out the gnomes/elves working hard in the reindeer stables! (I like the tooth brushing!)

It's also worth noting that the first of the two, "Santa's Workshop" was the fourth Silly Symphony cartoon to be produced in color.

Technicolor sleigh prep in "Santa's Workshop"

I also enjoy seeing Santa play with all the toys in "The Night Before Christmas."  In my experience, great gift givers tend to retain a sense of wonder and Santa's willingness to engage with the toys illustrates this quality.

Santa gets a pretty good sound out of that toy piano! 

It's interesting to note that -- as was traditional at the time -- Santa not only brings the toys to go under the Christmas tree, but also the tree itself.  There's a cute gag where Santa unfolds the tree like an umbrella and the toys get in on the act to help with decorating it.

Talented toys (and a zeppelin!) decorate the tree in "The Night Before Christmas"

As J.A. Morris mentions above,  these cartoons contain some less pleasant artifacts from the early 20th century in the form of some ugly stereotypical portrayals of blacks, Asians and Jewish folks.   So when these shorts are made available now, they are often edited to leave out the offensive stereotypes.  They definitely drag me right out of enjoying the beautiful animation.

Ugly stereotypes will get you on the naughty list nowadays! (Rightly so!) 

The complete, unedited shorts are available on the Disney Treasures More Silly Symphonies Volume 2 set, if you want to seek them out.

Nine (!!) small children vs. Christmas tree (Junior is not in the frame though ...) 

On a side note, Mickey Mouse himself makes  an appearance in toy form.   Mickey was a popular presence under Christmas trees from the 1930s onward and it's interesting to think about how DisneyCorp is still pushing the envelope with product placement to this very day.

M-I-C-K-E-Y ... 

Both "Santa's Workshop" and "The Night Before Christmas" are worth seeking out for their beautiful animation and general sweetness, but the ugly stereotypes knock my overall rating down a bit.

The puppy is super-cute though!  And Junior wants him to see Santa ... awww! 

RigbyMel's rating: 

3 Candy Canes.