A Chipmunk Christmas

The whole Chipmunks phenomenon started with the novelty track "The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don't Be Late)" A slew of albums and a TV series followed. Then, the Chipmunks went away for nearly a decade. A Chipmunk Christmas was their return to television. The special featured updated character designs from Chuck Jones. His contributions to the style of the special are unmistakable. It's practically a companion piece to his work on things like The Phantom Tollbooth and How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Two years after the special, the Chipmunks would return to TV with a regular series that lasted eight seasons. And the popularity of the Chipmunks has continued to wax and wane ever since.

Rating: Harmonica%

A Very Merry Cricket

A Very Merry Cricket isn't the easiest thing to explain. For starters, it's a sequel to an animated adaptation of the children's book The Cricket in Times Square. Both specials were made by Chuck Jones, the Looney Tunes guy. You may also remember his work on another Christmas Special How the Grinch Stole Christmas. From what I can gather, in the first special a Connecticut cricket named Chester ends up in New York and eventually becomes famous for his ability to play music. In this follow-up, Chester's old pals Harry and Tucker go to Connecticut to bring Chester back to New York so that he can play for the city folk and remind them to be kind to one another, or something like that. There really isn't a whole lot that happens during the special. It's definitely worth a watch if you're animation fan though. A lot of the animation is of the Looney Tunes variety (including some voice work from Mel Blanc) but it's combined with some distorted city imagery and grotesquely painted backgrounds that reminded me a lot of the work of Ralph Bakshi.

Rating: A One Cat Open Sleigh%

(Image from firstanimationart.com)

12 More Days of Christmas Specials: Bugs Bunny's Looney Christmas Tales

Bugs Bunny's Looney Christmas Tales probably isn't on too many "Must See Christmas Specials" lists, but the Special deserves at least some credit for the amount of material that they're able to cram into 23 minutes. The Special is a compilation of three original cartoon shorts with a bit of a wrap around story to tie them all together. The first short is the obligatory adaptation of A Christmas Carol, featuring Yosemite Sam as Scrooge and Bugs Bunny filling in for the spiritual motivators. The second short is a Road Runner cartoon that has virtually no connection to the holidays. The last short finds the Tazmanian Devil accidentally assuming the role of Santa Claus and bumping heads with Bugs. There's nothing terribly special about the Special but I appreciated it for it's lack of somber themes.

Rating: 70%

(Image from jeffco.ca)

12 Days of Christmas Specials - #3: How the Grinch Stole Christmas

I won't bother with a recap of this particular Christmas special. You know what it's about, don't pretend like you haven't seen it a million times already. One of the reasons I decided to review a bunch of Christmas specials this year was so that I could go back and watch some of the classics that I hadn't seen since I was a kid (and some, including this one, that I'd been avoiding for years.) The main reason that the Grinch landed on my list of specials to cover was because of the narration by Boris Karloff, but what turned out to be even better than that was the animation by Chuck Jones which combined Dr. Seuss' artwork with the classic Looney Tunes style. But honestly though, thank God the thing was only twenty-five minutes long, the endless rhyming lists of Who decorations and instruments drove me nuts.

Rating: 10 Lords-a-Leaping%

(Image from howthegrinchstolechristmas.film.bigbestmovie.com)