Review of Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer

Introduction

Rudolph, an odd-ball reindeer with a glowing crimson orb, feels like a pariah amongst his normal, black-snouted contemporaries, forced to wear a black cap on his nose to stop his friends from chiding him as a freak of nature. Meanwhile, a disenfranchised elf, bullied by his slave-driving boss, flees the sanctity of the toy factory to be marginalised in the snowy wilderness alongside Rudolph, opening the avalanche for a belabored, dubious moral treatise on tolerance mediated by the eventual assimilation of such outsiders.

Video

An unmitigated scratch-fest, not to mention the drab, inconsistent colours. Not good.

Audio

Scratchy mono screeches out the lively soundtrack.

Features

Aside from the quaint trailer, the interview with creator Alan Rankin is a curious and welcome addition, offering some insight into the production process of ‘Rudolph’s “Ani-Magic”. Rankin makes for an appealing host here, genial enough for adults, waxing philosophic about the spirit of Christmas and lacking even a flicker of condescension to his younger audience. There’s also a deleted song (the original alternate to ‘We’re a Couple of Misfits’) called ‘Fame and Fortune’ replaced, presumably, as it has nothing at all to do with the story. A bottom of the barrel DVD that has actually bothered to scrape out some extras? Congratulations are in order.

Conclusion

Oddly captivating, sing-song heavy animated-model extravaganza for the technologically undemanding pre-schooler. Whilst the music and stammering animation are the stuff of a thousand cheapo ‘60s after-school specials, there’s something profoundly surreal about the deployment of traditional cinematic techniques: wipe-pans, dollies, close-ups etc. in the realm of claymation (not to mention the use of a 4th-wall breaking narrator: a snowman inexplicably decked-out in fetching Old West Dandy attire.) Sadly, the movement of the characters is considerably less slick than the frugal, floaty camera-work, not to mention Rudolph’s ‘red nose’, which, if I’m not mistaken, is the red LED that’s been nicked from my remote control.

Santa dances and sings incessantly, a somewhat insidious prospector turns up for… little discernable reason but for a bout of shrieking campery, as a plot meanders through the relentless goodwill incantations, vying for supremacy. It’s all fanciful frippery, so undemanding that it practically dissolves as you watch it. The voice-acting isn’t too dreadful, and it has a certain cinematic fluidity that belies the static crude-ness of the models, sets and animation: the Abominable Snowman is so bad it looks like something a cat might cough up if a child fed it play-dough. Very young children might be suitably transfixed by all this somnambulistic doe-eyed jerking, but I can’t imagine even the most deluded tot picking this over ‘Finding Nemo’ this Christmas.