Rudolph's Shiny New Year (1976)
** 1/2 (out of 4)
Mildly entertaining animated film from Bass and Rankin starts off where the previous film ended. This time out Santa gets a call saying that baby New Year has gone missing and without him there will be no new year. With bad weather out Santa decides to send Rudolph who goes out to search for the kid. This film falls well short of the original movie but I think there's enough here for adults to enjoy. I say adults because I think there are quite a few dark moments here that might scare young kids and I'd also say that the movie contains some rather mean-spirited moments that really aren't good for them either. I say this because the entire thing is about baby New Year having large ears. The kid goes from one island to the next but he's constantly being laughed at for having big years. The "moral" of the story is obvious but with Rudolph you had other kids making fun and laughing at him while the majority of the people laughing at New Year are adults. With that out of the way, the rest of the film is fairly entertaining, although it really should have just been thirty-minutes instead of an hour. As you'd expect the animation is very good and there's no question that Rudolph is a very good and entertaining character. The supporting players (bears, Ben Franklin, a caveman) are interesting as well.
** 1/2 (out of 4)
Mildly entertaining animated film from Bass and Rankin starts off where the previous film ended. This time out Santa gets a call saying that baby New Year has gone missing and without him there will be no new year. With bad weather out Santa decides to send Rudolph who goes out to search for the kid. This film falls well short of the original movie but I think there's enough here for adults to enjoy. I say adults because I think there are quite a few dark moments here that might scare young kids and I'd also say that the movie contains some rather mean-spirited moments that really aren't good for them either. I say this because the entire thing is about baby New Year having large ears. The kid goes from one island to the next but he's constantly being laughed at for having big years. The "moral" of the story is obvious but with Rudolph you had other kids making fun and laughing at him while the majority of the people laughing at New Year are adults. With that out of the way, the rest of the film is fairly entertaining, although it really should have just been thirty-minutes instead of an hour. As you'd expect the animation is very good and there's no question that Rudolph is a very good and entertaining character. The supporting players (bears, Ben Franklin, a caveman) are interesting as well.