Wednesday, December 20, 2017

'Toon Reviews 10: Rankin/Bass Christmas Specials Part 19: Santa, Baby! + Final Thoughts


Santa, Baby!



Told by Patti LaBelle
Original Airdate: December 17, 2001
Does not currently air on TV
DVD Out of Print
Available to watch in parts on YouTube as of 2017

Part 1:

In an interesting turn events, Rankin/Bass came together to create one more Christmas special, 16 years after their previous one.  Ultimately though, it would end up being their most unknown special of all. It’s never been re-aired after its premiere. No DVD releases are available nowadays and older ones are near impossible to find.  Above all, the only way to watch it without owning it is through a low-quality YouTube upload recorded from a camera in front of a TV screen.  Plus, with the death of Arthur Rankin Jr. in 2014, this is pretty much guaranteed to be the last Rankin/Bass special ever.  Personally, it’s a shame that this is the case, for even if it’s not the most spectacular, interesting, or creative special, it's quite good for what it is.
This is one of the company’s more down-to-Earth stories. The focus is on a common family of Heptune Street, a city area sorely lacking the Christmas spirit, or general friendliness.  There’s a little girl named Dakota whose biggest passion is to find homes for all the stray pets of the city. This is made difficult by the jerk superintendent, Mr. Sweet, who wants to close the shelter and doesn’t want them running around in the apartment building Dakota’s family lives in.  While that’s going on, Dakota’s father, Noel, is struggling to come up with a perfect Christmas song for his company, isolating himself in the process.  However, everything changes when Dakota rescues a bird from the cold, and it turns out that she’s the magical partridge in a pear tree called Melody Birdsong.  She's thoroughly entertaining with her witty one-liners and her ability to make the gifts from “12 Days of Christmas” appear. Another magic power is granting people wishes, and since Dakota saved her, she earns the wish.  Thinking considerately, Dakota wishes for Noel to write the hit song he’s desperate for.  You’d think that Noel would just write a great song right there. Then the story takes a more interesting turn, showing that there’s more to him finding the right tune than one might expect.  Melody has Noel pose as a salvation Santa asking for money from city citizens.  This setup just causes Noel a lot of humiliation at first. Then through spending time with his daughter and wife in the process, with a fun cover of the title song performed at one point, he reaches out to more of Heptune Street.  With his family’s help, Noel performs many acts of community service, which may not be the most exciting thing to see.  Nevertheless, it’s nice to see how his little acts lead to one much bigger. It's an upbeat sequence where he sets out to clean up a playground and decorate a Christmas tree, and the whole street joins in to help, all set to a hip-hop cover of carols.  It’s an effective and exciting way to get across the theme of the importance of community.  Seeing this street of join Noel in his services and make what they do fun and exciting is perfectly reflective of a neighborhood of different people. It's also incredibly nice to see them all in one environment.  This is especially pleasing when you consider how harsh certain characters can get at certain points.
Although this special has a great mindset on stressing the importance of community, the harshness that surrounds Heptune Street really gets overbearing at times. I mentioned before how the city citizens aren’t all that friendly at first, but they later come around.  However, it’s Mr. Sweet who proves to be the most stubborn.  It’s one thing for him to be annoyed by the animals in the shelter, but his jerkiness goes way beyond just that.  He’s always claiming ownership of everything, not just the building, and dictates what people should do about Christmas without any good reasons.  They try to make him sympathetic by talking about him losing his wife, but aside from one mention, it’s never brought up again. Also, when he deliberately ruins the animal shelter, forcing the homeless pets into the cold streets, his past does nothing to make him more likable.  Sadly, even the main protagonist has a lot of unnecessary harshness to him.  Noel isn’t nearly as bad since he clearly tries to bond with his daughter.  Regardless, his isolation from his family while writing his song makes him come off as a big complainer which isn't compelling.  The worst from him comes after Mr. Sweet wrecks the animal shelter. Dakota begs Noel to help, and he shows no interest in the matter despite all the service he did for the community, right down to calling the animals dumb.  That is just not cool, showing no support for what his daughter cares about.  As harsh as some of Noel’s moments are, they fortunately lead to a moment that singlehandedly saves his portrayal.  When he finds out that Melody put him through everything because Dakota wanted him to have a hit song more than anything, he admits family is more important than his own desires. Then through attempting to rescue a kitten despite running into all sorts of dangers, Noel once again brings the whole community together.  It starts when Mr. Sweet also has a redeeming moment through realizing he went too far with trying to get the animals out. He helps Noel rescue the kitten declaring that the animals deserve a home.  Then everyone around decides to pitch in and restore the shelter further enhancing the special’s community theme. Not to mention, this finally brings about Noel’s song, “Heart and Soul of Christmas.”  It sells the theme, its tune is memorable fits the tone of the setting, and Noel writing the music on the shelter walls fits the creative process of real life songwriters.  This final sense of community brings all plot points together so well, the following scene of Melody having Noel and Dakota fill in for an injured Santa feels unneeded.  Melody claims what he was doing was preparing him for this role which makes sense.  However, the neighborhood being united, Noel getting his song, and the shelter pets getting homes feel like a more appropriate end result.  Still, the scene is full of Christmas spirit which is appropriate after everything Noel learned throughout the special. Further, it sells the power of the holiday that the Rankin/Bass specials have been known to demonstrate.
The story itself may not be all that creative or grand enough for what would ultimately be this company’s final special and can get a little harsh at times.  It still has enough good qualities to refer to it as a forgotten gem.  The sense of community is strong. The music is catchy and fitting for the setting. The hand-drawn animation has the same Rankin/Bass charm as well as modern refurbishments. Best of all everything amounts to an impactful feeling of Christmas.  It’s a little sad that this final work is so unknown, but it really leaves us wondering how different today’s Christmases would be if this led to Rankin/Bass producing more specials.

Recommended


The Ranking
  1. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
  2. Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town
  3. The Year Without a Santa Claus
  4. Frosty the Snowman
  5. The Little Drummer Boy
  6. Jack Frost
  7. The Stingiest Man in Town
  8. Rudolph’s Shiny New Year
  9. Nestor the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey
  10. The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus
  11. Santa, Baby!
  12. Pinocchio’s Christmas
  13. The First Christmas: The Story of the First Christmas Snow
  14. Rudolph and Frosty’s Christmas in July
  15.  ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas
  16. Frosty’s Winter Wonderland
  17. The Little Drummer Boy Book II
  18. Cricket on the Hearth
  19. The Leprechaun’s Christmas Gold
Final Thoughts
Going through all the Rankin/Bass Christmas specials this month has certainly been an enlightening experience to say the least.  It’s intriguing to note how much respect their work has for Christmas, covering nearly every aspect. They include figures in the holiday's popular songs and stories, the lifestyle and origins of Santa Claus, the beauty and fun of wintertraditions, and even the religious aesthetics.  Each work has a special Christmas feeling that will forever give you a positive outlook on the holiday from the environments to the storytelling and characterization. 
Many leads of the stories they tell are likable and often times sympathetic. Given the pleasing, Christmassy designs of the worlds they live in, following them all throughout is something to look forward to.  Enhancing what the main characters go through is a clear sense of imagination. It's felt in the versatile side characters, the ways customs of holiday figures move the plot forward, and especially the use of music.  Almost all these specials, even the weaker ones, are easily masterful when it comes to music.  The background orchestrations are grand and immersive for all the scenes they convey whether they’re light-hearted, slow and intimate, sad, or intense and threatening.  Not only that, but you’re practically guaranteed to walk away with many songs of a special playing in your head.  The songs created specifically for certain specials have a lot of spirit and energy in their craftsmanship. Plus, all established Christmas songs many specials are based upon have the perfect talent to perform them, making their covers the first ones I think of.  Like with many great animated works, music brings everything strong about these specials together in ways you can’t describe any other way than Christmas.  One other strong aspect of these specials is that in addition to being cute, fun, and Christmassy, they’re not afraid to resort to dark and threatening measures to tell their stories.  A good number of these plots, especially for the earlier specials, put many of our heroes into serious situations.  They know that life, even in Christmassy settings, isn’t all fun and happiness.  We see characters excluded for their differences by society, dealing with harsh opinions from outsiders, constantly being threatened by death, and getting their whole worldviews altered by traumatic experiences such as losing parents.  When the hearts of the specials are truly in it, these dark moments are in perfect balance with the cuter and happier moments, investing the audience with a believable tone.  In fact, the darker aspects are what make the happier and pleasing moments of Christmas impactful.  Without them, the specials would end up too light-hearted and not as immersive.  They also help display powerful messages many specials share. Themes include how those who are different can still make a significant impact, the importance of putting aside your needs for your friends, how the spirit of Santa Claus will always exist as long as there's generosity and giving from everyone, and always putting faith and trust in God even through endless hardships.  Overall, these specials are not just genuine feel-good Christmas treats. With their daring storytelling decisions and powerful themes, they’re also impactful animated works worth making a tradition of watching.
As much as I praise these Rankin/Bass specials, I have to admit that only a select few are worth making traditions of watching.  For all the amazing specials, this company also have a fair number of specials that don’t stand out nearly as much.  It doesn’t have to do with the animation quality of the specials which, even in their great works, can get awkward in motion and lack good lip sync at times.  This is especially not a big deal since it does become smoother and more stylized with every new special.  It all has to do with the storytelling quality.  For starting out with such daring specials so close together, it’s hard to believe that many others are rather uneventful.  These are cases where the overall stories aren’t all that creative and feature mostly fun and safe moments without any heavier or darker moments they can incorporate.  As a result, those kinds of specials aren’t nearly as spectacular.  Other times, the stories can be fueled by unbelievable mean-spiritedness that can prevent you from getting all that invested.  Such examples include Santa ignoring a whole town because one resident doesn’t believe, the protagonist having questionable morality, or residents acting jerky for no good reason.  There are also specials that are hard to take seriously as Christmas specials preventing them from the status of “traditional” viewing. At times the holiday is barely mentioned, the customs feel more fitting of another holiday, and background on a holiday figure doesn’t always feel like a good fit.  These detracting factors are especially prevalent in the sequels to the more popular specials, and I’m not preferring those produced by other studios. Even the ones Rankin/Bass themselves made have significant issues.  They have a tendency to have strong continuity in some areas, but show no regard to the very thing in others, especially when attempts at giving depth to lore from the predecessors end up devaluing what made certain parts of what came before so powerful.  Now, even if a number of Christmas specials are noticeably stronger than others, in my eyes, none of them are bad.  In fact, each of them are worth viewing for one reason or another.  Some could be for wholesome bonds, certain stand-out characters and/or songs, the spirit of Christmas shining through despite all weak points.  Basically, not all Rankin/Bass specials will be ones that you’ll want to watch traditionally.  However, they’re all capable of leaving an impact in some way, further demonstrating how much they embody the spirit of Christmas.
It may be apparent that some, but not all, Rankin/Bass Christmas specials are amazing works , but those that do turn out strong are practically ones Christmas wouldn't be the same without.  For that, they deserve to be called a household name at that special time of year, whether they’re works loved the world over, or lesser known ones.  So, be sure to keep the best of Rankin/Bass’ holiday repertoire playing every year and be sure to track down the highest ranked specials you may not know. Most of all, never hesitate to share them with many generations to come, for Christmas is synonymous with the one and only Rankin/Bass.
Recommended
With that, my look at the Rankin/Bass Christmas specials has come to an end.  It was great sharing my thoughts on them with you this holiday season as much as it was looking into them.  Be sure to come back after the holiday for the next set of reviews, this time on the first season of a Netflix-animated series, Voltron: Legendary Defender.  Until then:
Stay Animated Folks,
And Merry CHRISTMAS!


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