Rotten Tomatoes score: N/A
This is, of course, one of the famous Rankin-Bass stop-motion productions that air every Christmas even to this day. Apparently this doesn't count as a "movie," since everyone refers to it as a "TV special," and Rotten Tomatoes doesn't list it. I have to admit, I fail to see the difference between a movie and a "special," so this is going on the list.
Anyway, whether it's a movie or a special, this one isn't as popular as Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, but it's pretty memorable. Fred Astaire lends his voice as the narrator, a mailman named S.D. Kluger, who enjoys violating federal law by opening and reading children's letters to Santa. The letters inspire him to tell the story of Kris Kringle (Mickey Rooney), the boy who would grow up to become Santa Claus.
Kris Kringle, we learn, was a foundling deposited on the doorstep of Burgermeister Meisterburger, the ill-tempered, curmudgeonly, sour-tongued, bitter old crank who serves as mayor of a northerly hamlet called Sombertown. He orders the tiny babe whisked away to the orphan asylum, but a 250-mile-per-hour wind kicks up and carries the child and his cradle away to the mountain of the Whispering Wind.
A diminutive fellow with an irritating Alvin and the Chipmunks style voice discovers the child and welcomes him into his home. It's a home filled with other diminutive fellows with irritating voices, called the Kringles, and their matriarch, Tante Kringle. Tante K (Joan Gardner) is the one who does most of the talking for the family, and by the grace of God she does not have an irritating voice.
The Kringles are toymakers by trade, but they are unable to share their creations with the kids of Sombertown, because a mean and despicable creature called the Winter Warlock keeps them in the grip of fear. However, once Kris grows up into a young man (whereupon he announces, "I'm a man now," lest we miss that subtlety), he braves the mountain and delivers a sackful of gifts to the children of Sombertown, whose lives are otherwise whiled away washing filthy stockings in a public fountain.
Kris Kringle's way of ingratiating himself to the children reminds us that this movie was made in the days before America's Most Wanted, when a gregarious adult who gives gifts to strangers' children could still be portrayed in a positive light. The Burgermeister fails to see the fun in it, though, since a toy-related accident has driven him into an anti-toy rage. He orders that anyone caught with a toy should be imprisoned without due process of law in a dungeon. The local schoolteacher Miss Jessica (Robie Lester) takes a liking to Kris, but expresses concern that the Burgermeister may visit his horrible wrath on Kris and the children. Luckily, Kris manages to flee the Burgermeister, but the old grouch is on notice now.
On his way home, Kris encounters the Winter Warlock, who blusters angrily for about five seconds before doing a total 180 and becoming a good guy. The movie's best song follows ("Put One Foot in Front of the Other"), and Winter promises to lend Kris a magical hand when he needs it. Immediately making good on that offer, Winter teleports Kris back to Sombertown where Miss Jessica awaits him. The Burgermeister has destroyed the toys, but Kris cleverly decides to hide replacements in the children's stockings while they dry over the hearth at night.
The ruse doesn't last long, and the Burgermeister eventually imprisons Kris and Winter in the dungeon. Winter's magic seems to have faded away along with his monstrous destructive cruelty, but fortunately he still has some magic corn that makes reindeer fly. What a lucky break. The reindeer help our heroes escape from their prison and report the Burgermeister's human rights violations to the United Nations.
The Kringle clan decide that they can no longer remain in the environs of Sombertown, for fear of persecution, so they make the journey to the North Pole. (As always in Christmas movies, the North Pole is located on a landmass that doesn't exist in real life. Maybe it's the Magnetic North Pole.) Kris decides he should alter his appearance, so he grows the beard pictured above in an effort to disguise himself as Abraham Lincoln.
There the Kringles (and Jessica, who marries Kris) spend the rest of their days, delivering toys to children once a year. Kris and Jessica really let themselves go, it seems, as they are morbidly obese in the epilogue. Thus, the movie devotes its final five minutes to the just-so story of Santa's origins that we've been promised all along.
It's hard to evaluate this movie, since I don't have a Rotten Tomatoes benchmark. But I think, in general, it's justifiably well-received and therefore
1. Some things in a child's life are more important than washing stockings.
Still, sock-washing remains a priority for most children nowadays.
2. Going from bad to good's as easy as taking your first step.
And for reasons obscure to me, once you've gone from bad to good, you will experience actual difficulty in walking for the remainder of your musical number.
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