Review for A Monster Christmas

A Monster Christmas is a simple story of two Abominable Snowkids Abby and Adam who when they try and escape from the clutches of the mad scientist Margaret Knowhow find refuge with Lily, her brother (constantly with his head in his laptop) and her father. Abby and Adam's father The Abominable Snowman comes to rescue them, but with the local totally inept dogcatcher prowling for any animals without a collar it's a case of who will catch who first.

This film feels almost an update of the classic Christmas adventures like Frosty the Snowman and Rudolph the Rednosed Reindeer. Much like those, this is a simple, innocent tale that has been created to not offend, not touch any nerves, but simply to be put on and enjoyed. And it does succeed, for the most part. The computer animation is basic to say the very least, the kind of thing that Pixar would have done in 1995 when they were preparing for Toy Story.

That being said, the voice acting which includes Ariel Winter, Emilio Estevez, Ray Liotta and the wonderful Jane Lynch more than makes up for it. If they had stretched the story or added a few more elements I could see this being a pretty good Christmas film rather than just a good TV one and certainly using these talented actors more would have been great.

One of the things I would say that hurts the film is the length. Nothing really happens in the story and when I get down to the nuts and bolts of the story there is very little that is memorable. There is little humour, besides people falling over or the Dogcatcher played by Matthew Lillard, bringing back his best Shaggy impression, messing around. Because of this, it is not a film that an adult will want to watch again and again, though the children that it is aimed it may find it cute and enjoyable. At a little under an hour, it would have made more sense to have included some extras or anything else the production company have created before and so that hurts it slightly.

A Monster Christmas is not going to go down as a holiday classic, or be played every Christmas, but it is certainly not a bad film. If you have young kids they may enjoy the innocent and sweet nature of it all and you can at least be assured that nothing bad will happen that may upset them. It's a shame as from the offset it does have a lot of potential and maybe if they decide to do a sequel this can be realised.