Christmas Party: Frosty the Snowman Times Three
I saw a double-feature a few days ago of Frosty the Snowman cartoons, and this being the season for the TAI Christmas Party, I knew I’d have to give it my attention - and you my thoughts.
First up was the original 1969 classic, Frosty the Snowman by Arthur Rankin and Jules Bass. You’ve all seen it a thousand times. A frustrated magician throws away his magic hat, which rolls into the possession of a group of kids looking for the finishing touch for their snowman. When they put the hat on his head, a magical transformation takes place, bringing the snowman back to life and giving the children the most magical Christmas they’ve ever had. The rotten magician, seeing that his hat really did have magical properties, gets greedy and decides to take it back.
This special really had everything: good animation and voice acting, memorable music, excellent voices (the immortal Jimmy Durante was the narrator), and most importantly, it really gave you a feeling for the magic of Christmas. That’s quite literally what saves Frosty in the end, after all. This cartoon, nearly 40 year later, remains one of the most beloved Christmas specials of all time and is easily one of Rankin and Bass’s crowning achievements, second only to their legendary version of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. You know you’ve seen it. You know you loved it.
Rankin and Bass would return to Frosty a few more times, such as in the 1976 film Frosty’s Winter Wonderland (in which Frosty falls in love) and the feature-length stop motion film Rudolph and Frosty’s Christmas in July (1979). Would that they were the only people to go to the Frosty well in the years since then, because the Frosty cartoons of the last two decades… well, to be kind, we’d be better off if they had never thawed out.
In 1992, Bill Melendez (one of the directors and producers of the excellent Charlie Brown specials) took his hand at a sequel, Frosty Returns, which was the second half of my double feature. Apparently, though, Melendez was suffering from a horrible case of zombie-inflicted brain rot, because the resultant film makes The Legend of Frosty look like Citizen Kane by comparison.
I didn’t notice how, exactly, Frosty “returned” in this cartoon, as I was too busy gagging over how insipid the writing is. The story is thus - an eeeeeeeeevil businessman invents a chemical that causes snow to evaporate, something that is welcomed by a town full of people fed up with the hassles of dealing with frozen precipitation. Only two kids in town - plus Frosty - seem to love the snow, and fight to keep it.
This is perhaps the single preachiest holiday special I’ve ever seen, and that includes every single one that features Jesus as a main character. It’s one thing to promote environmentalism. It’s quite another to cram it down the viewer’s throat the way this cartoon does. From the painful stereotype of the villain to the inane ravings of the children (the spray is bad because snow is such an important part of the ecosystem!), barely a minute went by in this cartoon that didn’t make me want to change the channel.
Perhaps the only thing worse than the story is the dialogue. A child who isn’t invited to play with the others cheerfully suggests, “Let’s go outside and make a fertility goddess!” When said child is later found locked in a box by his only friend, a would-be magician, her mother scolds her with, “Now how are you going to feel when poor Charles grows up and has to join a support group?” Later, in school, a kid complains that his dad says “Snow causes heart attacks,” and the same little weenie who wanted to make a snow-goddess fires back, “He must be confusing it with chili dogs.”
I don’t know what Mendelson was thinking when he got into this cartoon. This is one of the guys responsible for A Charlie Brown Christmas , for cryin’ out loud. This is really, really bad. Why CBS (or any other network, for that matter) would choose to air this cartoon instead of the infinitely superior Frosty’s Winter Wonderland is utterly beyond me. Fortunately, ABC Family didn’t skimp on us this year, and the best Frosty sequel is in rotation there.
In Frosty’s Winter Wonderland (1976), Frosty comes home to his friends the next Christmas, only to find he’s still lonely when his human friends go home at night. The children decide that what Frosty really needs is a wife, and they go about constructing a snowwoman, Crystal, to share his days. At first, Crystal is just an ordinary, immobile snow creation, without Frosty’s spark of life, but the warm-hearted galoot falls for her anyway, giving her a bouquet made of ice. The love in his flowers brings her to life, and things for Frosty are looking pretty darn good - until that pesky Jack Frost, in a fit of jealousy, decides he wants all the winter magic for himself.
The cast for this special is pretty good as well. Jackie Vernon reprises his role from the original, with Shelley Winters playing Crystal and Andy Griffith taking over the narrator duties from Jimmy Durante. By the end of the cartoon, there’s a whole snow menagerie, and we wind up with a pretty positive message - that perhaps love really is the greatest magic of all. This is the most worthy of all the Frosty sequels, the only one that really captures the magic of the original. If you’ve got a choice, watch this one instead of Returns. Actually, if you’ve got a choice, watch this one and toss Returns onto the yule log. It’ll do better as fuel for the fire than entertainment.