TV Special Review: Santa Claus is Comin' to Town

Stars: 4 out of 5

Pros: Fun and charming look at the origins of Santa

Cons: Dated.  Very dated

The Bottom Line: 

Santa's origins

Fun and charming claymation

But very dated

Have Questions about Santa?  Get the Answers in Santa Claus is Comin' to Town

I was recently sent a set of Christmas specials in exchange for review, most of which I had never seen before.  One of them was the stop motion classic Santa Claus Is Comin' To Town.  Nope, I'd never even heard of it before, but I found it pretty fun.

As the special opens, we run into a mail man (voiced by Fred Astaire) who is delivering letters to Santa.  He decides to tell us all about Santa.

It starts many years ago when a baby was left in the care of the Burgermeister Meisterburger (Paul Frees).  Being the mean guy that he is, Burgermeister throws the baby out.  But he winds up in the care of a family of elves named Kringle who happen to be toy makers.

The baby grows into a man named Kris (Mickey Rooney) who decides to deliver the toys that his family makes to share the joy with kids everywhere.  But when he returns to his home village, he finds that the Burgermeister Meisterburger has outlawed all toys.  As a result of defying the ban, Kris becomes a wanted fugitive.  Can he find a way to bring joy to the kids of the village?  And what about the Winter Warlock (Keenan Wynn) who lives between the Kringles and the village?

To be honest, I wasn't expecting much from this special, and I'm not quite sure why.  Maybe my low expectations were why this one surprised me so much.  I actually got quite caught up in the story even though I had most of it figured out early.  The characters were so great, too, from Kris to his adopted family and his love interest Jessica (Robie Lester) on the good side to the villain you love to hate, Burgermeister Meisterburger.

I'm not a big fan of stop motion animation.  It looks too jerky to me most of the time.  That was certainly the case here, but I actually found it charming.  Maybe I'm softening in my old age.

One drawback to this short is the music.  Outside of the title song (which Fred Astaire sings so well), all the songs were unfamiliar to me.  Frankly, they didn't add much.  In fact, I found myself wanting to fast forward through them to get back to the story.

Not helping at all was how dated the musical segments were.  This special was released in 1970, and it shows.  I got a definite flower power vibe off the animation during the songs.  There were a couple of other times I felt a bit of that crept into the story.  You might also describe it as psychedelic.  My roommate found this aspect even more annoying than I did; I was mostly able to ignore it and get lost in the story again when it was over.

Kids, the target audience, won't notice how dated this is.  In fact, they'll find the 50 minutes over all too quickly.  Santa Claus Is Comin' To Town, and he's doing it with plenty of charm to entertain for years to come.