A rather enormous and singing Santa Claus finishes up his annual present delivery and heads back to the cabin he calls home in the North Pole to pass out alone! But unbeknownst to him a ragtag group of kids from all corners of the globe secretly hitch a ride in his sleigh and decide to try and do something nice for the jolly bringer of holiday cheer as he sleeps by doing his chores while trying to keep quiet.. So I immediately noticed that this is definitely not Disney's work or even up to the standard of a Fleischer cartoon, but it is cute and amusing enough, it's just pretty standard stuff all around. It's certainly shameless when it comes to the old fashioned stereotypes though, except for little Audrey who represents America and of course leads the rest of the children into action, none of them have an inkling of personality beyond playing up to their specific nationalities all the time, it's the laziest thing.. The Russian boy just wears one of those stupid big hats and says "Da!" I wasn't that particularly fussed about the 'terrible' stereotypes, just by the overall lameness of it, and by the lack of any real Christmas joy or spirit that was put into such a bland little short. I didn't like the design of Santa or of the children, he looked like a giant red blob and they all had the same ugly balloon-like heads. I didn't care for the music either, it wasn't endearing, it was twee and annoying! It bugged me too with some of the details, like I know these things are never meant to make perfect sense but it annoyed me when Little Audrey tied the pillows around the dumb Dutch kid's clogs instead of just taking the dang things off! One thing that really made me laugh was just how kind of sad it was when Santa wished himself a Merry Christmas with no sign of a Mrs Claus anywhere! So while this may not be the most entertaining vintage cartoon ever made, which it isn't, it does have a well meaning story of giving back at Christmas for a change, and hey, it's an old Christmas cartoon, and all old Christmas cartoons are just special! Just turns out that some are a little more special than others.. Just about passable as a watch around Christmastime, pleasantly awful. X
Review of Santa's Surprise
Santa's Surprise
(1947)
Little Audrey and the six ethnic stereotypes gatecrash Christmas!
3 October 2019