Monday, December 17, 2012

12 More Days of Christmas Specials: The Fat Albert Christmas Special

Most Christmas Specials do little more than insert their sitcom/cartoon characters into variations on A Christmas Carol. The Fat Albert Christmas Special does that too, but it also mixes in a little bit from the Christmas pageant. The Special starts out with Fat Albert and the gang rehearsing a Nativity play when they're interrupted by Mr. Tyrone, the heartless owner of the junkyard where the gang have made their clubhouse. Mr. Tyrone threatens to bulldoze the clubhouse because he's a jerk and that's what jerks do around the holiday season. After he leaves, the gang are interrupted by a family in distress. Their car has broken down, they've got nowhere to stay and the mother is due to give birth any minute (sound familiar?). From there it's a madcap dash to save the clubhouse and help the struggling family. The special is short, entertaining and has a visual stlye that depicts urban environments in a stylized yet somewhat realistic manner that marks it as being very much from the 1970s.

Rating: 72%

(Image from charlesprogers.com)

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