“Let’s go kick some Christmas butt!” When these are the climactic words spoken by Santa Claus prior to his Christmas Eve trip using a flying ice cream truck instead of his sleigh, you know you’re in trouble. A Freezerburnt Christmas is easily the worst Christmas movie I have ever seen and would challenge any reader to find a worse holiday film. Even though it is only 22 minutes long, I was frustrated by the fact that I’m never going to get those 22 minutes back. This was a stop-motion cartoon but let’s face it – the…classics were stop-motion “Rudoph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and “Frosty the Snowman” to name two, but they were classics because they were made in the 60’s and stop-motion may have reached perfection at that point…almost 40 years ago!
So Freezerburnt, his pet penguin Chilly and his boss’ daughter who happens to be an astrophysicist drive the 3000 miles it takes to get to the North Pole to warn Saint Nick. During the trip, (which takes less than one day) they are delayed by some sneaky tactics by Atnas. When they eventually arrive to Santa’s workshop they discover that the reindeer are grounded and that Atnas is well on his way to ruin Christmas. Luckily (or unluckily for anyone watching this) Santa and Freezerburnt come up with the plan to use Freezerburnt’s ice cream truck as the sleigh, towed by various Arctic animals (including a whale, a wolf, and a polar bear) who gain the power of flight using Santa’s magic flying powder. A frantic flying battle occurs as Atnas and his two stooges attempt to catch our heroes. They are defeated by flying ice cream. With Atnas soundly defeated, Santa can bring toys to all the girls and boys and bring this show to a merciful end.
Video
The standard 4:3 transfer was fair with noticeable pixilation at times. The color were bright and vivid as would be expected in this type of presentation. The black level was good and the contrast from dark to light (snow scenes) were decent.
Audio
Nothing special here. The show is presented in Dolby Digital 2.0 with minimal right-left separation. There is little use of bass effect.
Special Features
The special features consist of a trivia game which included 10 questions based on the show. The 10 minute “making of” feature was a passable look into the world of stop motion animation including the painstaking process of filming frame by frame. This contained interviews with the director and animation coordinators as well as the voice actors. Finally there were trailers for “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Special Edition,” “Hamilton Mattress,” “Second Star to the Left,” “It’s a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie” and “Christmas Carol: The Movie.”
Final Thoughts
As critical as I was when watching this show, my nearly 3 year old daughter summed it up best by saying 5 minutes into watching it, “Daddy I want to watch Toy Story.” I couldn’t have said it better myself.
Special Features List
- Making-of Featurette
- Freezerburnt Trivia Game
Screenshots
