the leading man is my tpye

The Worst Film Ever

Takes itself way too seriously

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

Everything connected to the Miser Brothers characters was good and could have translated to a simple story about learning to work together.The North Wind was a completely unnecessary character that was not needed to tell the story... but of course every story NEEDS a villain... oh, except The Year Without a Santa Claus, where this story comes from.Also, hire decent songwriters. REAL songwriters. Contemporary songsters DON'T necessarily write properly for musicals.If you're going to revisit a story and characters, you need to try a little harder than this. This just felt like an obligatory release in order to keep a recently acquired intellectual property... oh like one from Rankin Bass to Warner Bros....But the animation was good, and the character design was fun. I didn't understand the many critiques against this, when the crime was in the storytelling and the songwriting.

The bickering brothers are back, this time called upon to save Christmas as Santa Claus suffers from a minor back injury incurred when flying between the feuding Miser Brothers.While the premise has potential, the execution was faulty. It was a mistake to reintroduce these characters for this special, because it invites comparison to their original appearance in "A Year Without A Santa Claus," and between the two Christmas specials, it's no contest."The Miser Brother's Christmas Special" opens with Tinsel, Santa's chief mechanic, working on a new Super-Sleigh for Santa to use, which Santa intends to test.Mother Nature meanwhile is holding an annual get-together with all of her children (and apparently has a very large number). One of her sons, North Wind (whom both Miser Brothers actively dislike) has learned that if something were to happen to Santa Claus, then he himself would take over Santa's business.Unlike any of the characters in the previous special, North Wind discloses an unsettling duplicitous nature. Seemingly doting and adoring of his mother, he is actually vain and narcissistic, possibly even sociopathic. He has become obsessed with the idea of taking over Santa's business for his own personal adoration and seemingly has no compunction whatsoever about eliminating Santa Claus permanently to accomplish this.He dispatches his minions to sabotage the Super-Sleigh, which forces Santa to crash land between the feuding Miser Brothers, causing them to be blamed for his injuries. North Wind is ready to assume Santa's duties, but Mother Nature has decided that the Miser Brothers should fill in for Santa Claus this year.Operations in Santa's workshop stagnate as the brothers continue to battle. Thanks to Mrs. Claus's delicate touch, the Miser brothers are finally persuaded to put aside their differences and cooperate. The history of the Miser Brothers is revealed at this point (and it may be apocryphal), as we learn they have been on Santa's "naughty" list for mutual bickering since infancy. This is inconsistent with what is known for about them in "A Year Without A Santa Claus," since they refer to each other as "step-brother," but this special suggests that they're actually fraternal twins.I guess we're to assume that Mother Nature is not bound by normal human laws of gestation and can have step-children obviously very close in age, if not the same age.North Wind has not stopped his machinations and has attached heating and cooling units to the bottom of Santa's sleigh, apparently capable of heating and cooling vast regions of the planet. The Miser Brothers are convinced that the other is responsible in a plot to heat or cool the entire planet, and they resume feuding. Santa, despite his injuries, decides to do the route himself, and the North Wind attacks, cutting Santa's reindeer loose and conjuring up a vortex to consume Santa forever.The brothers, who have learned that neither is to blame for Santa's injuries and that Santa was the victim of sabotage by the North Wind, come to the rescue and through some tricky maneuvering, manage to pull Santa out, although nearly becoming swallowed by the vortex themselves. But all are rescued and North Wind has been captured. The Miser Brothers have made Santa's "nice" list for the first time, and North Wind is consigned to doing chores for Mother Nature for the next several thousand years.Where this special fails is the introduction of malice. The Miser Brothers had a mutual animosity, but this special takes it too far. Where they were once content to annoy and frustrate each other, even to causing minor injuries in the style of slapstick comedy, they have since escalated their hostility and seek genuine harm. And even more disturbing is the North Wind's apparent amorality. Mother Nature's sentence of doing chores, even for a few thousand years, seems rather lenient for someone who tried to murder Santa Claus.Were it not for the repeated reuse of the Miser Brothers' ragtime song from A Year Without A Santa Claus, the songs would have nothing to redeem them. In contrast with the dynamic styles used in "Year," such as the Dixieland-style "It's Gonna Snow-Ho-Ho Right Here in Dixie," and the poignant numbers, such as "Blue Christmas" and "I Believe In Santa Claus," the new songs for this special are vapid. It gave me the distinct impressions that they were written at the last minute.It is indeed regrettable, because the Miser Brothers are worthy characters and deserving of their own Christmas special. Sadly, this special has failed them miserably, and it would have been better for this special had they not been used for it. I'd prefer to remember the Miser Brothers as they were in "A Year Without A Santa Claus" and forget this special even exists.

As with practically every TV show and movie, when you try to resurrect characters years later, the efforts are usually pretty pale imitations of the original. Some examples are the new Indiana Jones movie, the latest Star Wars films and attempts to revive the TV show "The Odd Couple". If I really thought about it, I am sure I could create a very long list of such misses--and you could as well.Well, in this same tradition, two somewhat obscure characters from the Rankin-Bass special, THE YEAR WITHOUT A SANTA CLAUS (1974) debuted--the Heat Miser and Snow Miser. They were great characters for kids and when I recently saw this old TV special again, I still enjoyed their antics. When my daughter found out that these two guys were returning for a NEW special, she insisted we watch it.The show is once again nominally about Santa Claus and through some intrigue that I could care less about, the evil North Wind is intent on destroying Santa and it's up to the two feuding Misers to make up and work together for the good of Christmas. In addition there are a whole host of immortals who control earthquakes, nature and head lice (I made that one up). This is all rather odd, I grant you. The problem is that not only are these new characters rather boring, but as a result of all this silly mumbo-jumbo, this hardly seems like a Christmas special at all! Additionally, the old Rankin-Bass stop-motion style has been replaced with a nice looking but noticeably different CG animation that is meant to mimic stop-motion. So, in other words, they deliberately made the characters move in a jerky fashion to imitate the old film. But, try as they might, it didn't look like the old film but this wasn't nearly the problem that the insipid story posed to the production.As far as the voice talents go, most of the original cast had either died or perhaps weren't interested other than Mickey Rooney who once again plays Santa. You can't blame them for not getting Shirley Booth or Dick Shawn since they were dead, but it was terribly obviously different if you watched this immediately after seeing THE YEAR WITHOUT A SANTA CLAUS. Mrs. Claus, in addition to a different voice, has been replaced with a younger and sexier new Mrs. Claus! The bottom line is that a bad story and too many changes result in a movie that the kids might like but parents will find tough going. Watchable, but just barely.

Our society seems to have lost the capacity to make a decent Christmas special. I don't know where to start. I'm a huge fan of The Year Without a Santa Claus (I even have the action figures) and the models they used in this "sequel" for the miser brothers don't really resemble the originals. They didn't even try with the other characters of Santa, Mrs. Claus, and Mother Nature who all look completely different. The original characters were charming and warm but these ones seemed like lifeless dolls. The story line was nonsensical and the music was simply dreadful. I honestly think the music and lyrics were written in a single evening. The only decent songs in the whole program where the retreads of the miser brother songs from the original. This is the second flop based on The Year Without a Santa Claus so I'm inclined to say leave well enough alone and don't attempt any more. Just because we now have the technology to churn out shows doesn't mean you can skip the story telling and music writing. Too bad because I love the originals and was hoping for some additional originals for my daughter's generation. Guess that was too much to hope for.