Where I Watched it: Disney Plus
English Audio Description Provided By Descriptive Video Works
Narrated By Arin Brennan
Is this an Animated short? Is it a feature? It runs at 62 minutes, I believe, which puts it in this very gray area. Either way, it is definitely the holiday version of Diary of A Wimpy Kid, and after several live action iterations and this being the third animated entry for Disney Plus, it felt like time. I mean, Dreamworks has a Bad Guys holiday special, and they only got one film.
The first two made me wonder why we remaking the live action movies as shorter animated versions. The first live action Wimpy kid is actually pretty good, and has the clout of Chloe Grace Moretz. This third animated entry forced the team doing these for the streamer to come up with a different story, and for the first time, I am ready to admit I’m surprised. Pleasantly. I went in, always trying to be neutral, but also with the reminder that I did already see the first two, which were fine. not great, just fine. While this is not my favorite new Holiday special by any means, I thought it took the series characters and really pushed them in a new direction.
Sure, the kids still have fun, and it will absolutely remind you of being a kid yourself, but there’s an odd little message that works rather well here, and surprisingly ties everything together in the end… like a Christmas bow. The kids accidentally destroy the snowplow, and that means the roads aren’t able to be driven on, which they learn ends up affecting a toy drive. But along the way, is that panic you have when you did something wrong as a kid, and you think the world is collapsing around you. your parents will murder you, and you will likely serve a life sentence in jail, where they might just give you the chair. Of course, as we tell our kids now, nothing is as bad as it seems, but it’s nice to see fake animated kids go through that. I think a lot of families can sit down together and have a great time watching something that might even spark a conversation.
the audio description does nice work here, although we are deep into sequel territory. i do feel like the first film, from what I can remember, did a better job of explaining how the animation was drawn more to reflect the original book series. I’m assuming that hasn’t changed, but who knows. Maybe we are into claymation now. However, I would say with all the various ways that animation can be drawn, we should probably start trying to explain the animation style. If blind people can go to art galleries and listen to how paintings are done, they should be able to bring those same people interested in what period a piece is from, or what the differences are between a drip painting and an impressionist work, and start offering people a glimpse into the intentionality of the art form of film animation. This would definitely benefit those who work in stop motion, whose work is immense as well as claymation, traditional hand drawn cel animation, and other styles. Film is art too, especially animators who are using so many similar styles to create their art as people whose art hangs in galleries. Let’s work on that.
This was a surprisingly nice special. I don’t know that I ever need to see it again, but some other families, whose kids really love the books may turn this into a holiday rewatch.
Final Grade: B