Sick Product of a Sick System

Crappy film

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

It's Christmas Eve and little Timmy's letter to Santa was somehow forgotten. So his dog and a mouse desperately try to track Santa down and deliver the letter so Timmy will have a good Christmas. A cute Hanna-Barbera Christmas special that seems to be all but forgotten today. It's corny stuff but enjoyable for what it is. Good voice work from Daws Butler and Paul Winchell, among other fine voice actors like Don Messick. The animation is adequate (it was made for TV, after all). It's also from Hanna-Barbera so you know there's a lot of corny jokes and loud sound effects. Thankfully there is no laugh track but you don't have to use your imagination to see the spots where it seems room was left for it. There are a number of songs, some of which were reused for later Hanna-Barbera TV specials. This isn't likely to become a new favorite of yours but if you enjoy old animated Christmas specials, it's certainly worth giving a try.

I have fond memories of this. The friendly mouse and dog team up to deliver a letter to Santa. They go all over town but keep running into store Santas or Salvation Army types or whatever. There are the usual Hanna Barbara songs, voicers (Daws Butler and Paul Winchell), treacly images of an ideal Christmas, etc.And know what, I loved every single second of it. They'd put this on about 7:30 pm in December back in the 70s, and I can remember playing outside in the snow as a kid, coming into the house and seeing this come on. It was a perfect tandem show w/ the Grinch/Rankin Bass/Peanuts stuff that is now better remembered.It's not a classic per se, but its not that bad, and if you ever get a chance to watch it, do so. You gotta like H-B from the 70s though. Fair Warning.

As a one-off, unrelated to any franchise Special (it's also nothing to do with the 1983 movie with the same title) it's clear that A Christmas Story has fallen into massive obscurity. Quite rightly so, as it's a fairly bland story with nothing memorable about it whatsoever.It begins in some quaint, little, snow-covered town with little Timmy being read to by his dad on Xmas Eve. But he's forgotten to mail his letter to Santa, so the dog and house mouse take off in search of the big-bearded gift-giver (who conveniently just happens to be down the street instead of anywhere else in the world) in order to give him said letter.Limp hijinks follow. And it ends with a total cop-out, borderline illogical ending which pretty much negates everything that precedes it. But I guess I'm scrutinizing a 1972 Hanna-Barbera cartoon a little too closely.Forget this one, and stick to Specials based on established franchises.

Caught this peculiar oddity when the tivo was set for Loony Tunes. I actually thought it was older than '72, which was the same year for Roman Holidays and Amazing Chan.As the other review says, it was Gumdrop the mouse (Daws Butler, imagine Elroy Jetson here) and Goober the dog (Paul Winchell, Tigger from Winnie the Pooh) who suddenly felt the need to get Timmy's letter to Santa and chased him from house to house.Nothing overly new from the HB stock. The 'Hope' song is played in both the Flintstones' Christmas program (not the original Christmas episode from the early sixties show, which appears to be scheduled to air on WGN this year) and the Yogi Bear show, Yogi's First Christmas (not in Casper's Christmas).LIke most of these shows, its over before it starts getting on your nerves. Flintstones, however, is an hour program and Yogi runs ninety minutes.