New York City just evokes Christmas, and it does so much that not one but two animated movies have been made about Christmas in New York. Neither looked like it would be a great movie but the sheer fact that they exist I needed to dwell into them. Both leave something to talk about despite their bad quality, with one having a whole Mondo TV shared cinematic animated universe and the other at least portraying the city in a way in animated form I guess.
Little Spirit: Christmas in New York 2008
This video is 40 mins long and not that bad, it knows what it is and doesn’t try to do much more. The New York in the movie and even the christmas essence is not in your face, though it does get referenced from time to time to at least make the title worth it but yeah it’s a wierd title counting it wasn’t used as much.. It has an odd premise of having two girls who moved to New York are stuck in traffic so the taxi driver tells them a story of Christmas magic in New York. so the actual story is of a kid who also moved and he hates it there and it’s almost christmas when his dog gets lost.
The boy Leo find a christmas spirit which is this weird yellow gummy looking thing who doesn’t talk and just kinda guides but not really as they jump through lights to go to different places to find his dog. The CG is not great but it’s stylized enough that it’s not awful to look at, and there is some nice mix of christmas music through out that fits the theme. Voice acting is decenet as well so you can make it through the movie just fine, nothing special. Macy’s did sponsor the movie and it was a waste not to have the end of the iconic Thansgiving Macy’s parade be in it because of it since pretty much everyone takes that as the official start of the christmas season.
Christmas in New York (2005)
This movie is unhinged and I don’t use the termm litghtely, you have a fifth grader who lives in the jungle who wants to go to New York City so he can meet Father Christmas. He talks to a talking owl that gives him permission to go and he goes with his talking dogs Winner the poodle and Fox the stray dog. He gets hotdogs for his dogs. There is a talking tree called arbor the king of trees who he says goodbye to. Now there’s an explanation to all of this but not in this movie, so I’ll continue talking a bit about the movie and later talk about these characters that have a whole other story.
The animation is cheap and the sound is generally awful. The story besides the bizarre characters is not good either to be able to enjoy it in a so bad it’s good kinda way. Fox the dog steals some collars so they can be walked, they try to find Santa but don’t undertand New York or the world. THey meet some people while looking for them and interactions not worht talking about. You do see some NY City imagery. It’s racially diverse too as the real city. At a point they question and get aggresive with a stray dog asking him where Father Christmas is. Movie should be 40 mins tops but it’s 1 hour and a half. A wheelchair girl recognizes fox, a snoflake fiary appears to grant one wish and they tell the boy to ask her to see his parents and the dogs tell the boy to ask where santa is, it’s so out there. The fairy is taken by the wind since he took too long to decide though he did get his wish for the wheelchair girl to be able to use her legs in the end.
Later they get rough on some reindieers so that htey can give them information on Santa and they just give him some of the reindeer’s names that Santa has. They ask them “tell us about santa” and they reply “we don’t know much” “even the small info is much for us” “he lives in the north pole” and they celebrate like they’re so happy to have that information. The Deku tree who is now there and can apparently teleport them to the north pole or he’d die but then the raindeder who were not helpful are now helpful . they take them to an elf factory. I mean why were they ever even in new york for? the kid is just stupid, we get some anthropomorphic Christmas presents. They go back to NY because of time zones differences can get them to meet Santa. The orphans get presents. he finds out all of the reindeer’s names, meets fake santa. everyone loves fox and I like that. We see a Santa Claus that is out of proportion with the other humans and the parents of Ari the kid who see that he’s well so he gets his wish as so do the dogs with hotdogs. The parents reveal they only left him alone because they’re concerned for his security and Santa is just happy there in the background, But then was it all a dream? He doesn’t know but doesn’t seem like it was since the dogs also remember their sausage dog party.
I wrote way more than I expected and it’s somehow seems more interesting htis way, so upon further research after what I had just watched it’s an Italian company that makes cheap animated movies. So yeah the characters had met before, since many of their movies do have continuity between them even if it makes no sense, they have Simba a lion king ri-off movie and tv show, A world cup movie, legend of the sleeping Beauty, WInner and the golden child, Simba Jr goes to NY. Mondo TV The dream factory might be more popular in europe and well yeah some characters appear in different movies so that’s why they just have characters that you apparently should already know from some of their other movies. I’d love to dive deeper into this but I don’t know if I have it in me, so many of hte movies share characters but don’t give more info on say the kid who is Ari the magical boy who lives in a forest for his protection but also gets sent to the land of the dinosaurs. Some of their movies have no references but then again could might as well be in the same continuity if Welcome back Pinochio is, why not Titanic 2? Anywho that’s two animated cartoons based on christmas in New York City.