Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer

Rating:
Summary: Always in Your Heart!
Review: As I sat with my precious 4 year old granddaughter and watched this video one more time, I smiled.This is one of those movies that you share with each little one that comes into your life.
Watching her eyes glow as the story unfolded brought me such joy; and listening to her trying to remember all the reindeer names brough a chuckle.
How could anyone not love this classic? It will be a tresure to share with every generation. If you have not seen it, which would be hard to believe, I highly recommend it. Wonderful

Rating:
Summary: Fidel Kringle
Review: I always loved the anti-authoritarian messages of the 60's-era Rankin Bass films. "Rudolph" is probably my favorite. Its sense of history, and sly use of metaphor, are unrivaled among holiday specials. Santa is a case in point: the brash young rebel of "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town" has aged, like so many real-life revolutionaries, into a complacent, jackbooted despot. He has mislaid the flame of revolution, which is now in the hands (or rather the nose) of young Rudolph.

To some degree, the tale is predictable, with a familiar set-up. A rebel-hero requires that the status quo (or ruling party) be, if not evil, then extremely jaded and misguided. Santa, the tyrant of Christmas Town, who has Castro's beard and pomposity, has built an austere, Walachia-like kingdom on the sweatshop labor of elves in the unregulated North. He seems the ideal villain-a capitalist straw man from a Socialist tract-and you eagerly await his downfall.

Of course, Jolly Saint Nick can never be deposed. As a young man, he once swept the Burghermeister into the flames like so much tinsel, but in the centuries since he has become the face of a nation and seems destined to fade, like Castro, into white hairs and senility. Thus, the tension-how will they resolve it?

Rudolph, shunned in his homeland, reaches maturity (like the prophets of old) on the howling wastes, where he regards the hollowness of Santa's regime. Like Simon in "Lord of the Flies," he realizes that the Abominable (the State bogeyman) is, in reality, just some harmless bugaboo, the product and victim of government hype. In a stirring climax, Rudolph the Red, assisted by an inner circle of misfits and weirdoes (including the defanged Abominable), returns to Christmas Town to confront Santa. He knows that the old regime, beset by storms and malaise, is doomed. What follows demonstrates his tactical genius: the venerable Santa will become the Revolution's impotent figurehead; Rudolph, its scorching beacon. The old king, recalling the glory of his own Putsch, hands the reins of power to the young firebrand, who quickly liberates the deformed misfit inmates of a floating Bastille (imprisoned "for their own good" by an imperious, leonine, eagle-winged warden) and unleashes them on society. Here's where my family breaks into "The Internationale" every time. (The French lyrics fit "Holly Jolly Christmas" almost perfectly). Enjoy!