FROSTY RETURNS

"Frosty the snowman, had to hurry on his way, but he waved goodbye saying, Don't you cry, I'll be back again some day." Yes, the Classic Rankin/Bass cartoon was a great Holiday special of the famous Icon and not counting the crossovers, I sure wish Frosty didn't come back. Why...
 

Believe it or not, I saw this before the actual classic and while I watched it a lot as a kid, it never really striked me as anything special.  When I finally saw the real classic special, that striked me as something special. As I got older,"Frosty Returns" seemed to get worse and worse and the only thing that held up was the coming attractions on the video before the actual film. So what's the plot? Frosty goes to a different Town and befriends a girl named Holly and her nerd friend Charles. However, the nasty old man Mr.Twitchell has invented a spray can to instantly make snow disappear and our heroes must stop him and show him the beauty of snow. Yes, this is a corny environmental story instead of a charming Christmas story. The special is narrated by Johnathan Winter.



In the original, we had Jimmy Durante as our narrator who was remarkable and outstanding as our narrator. Johnathan Winters on the other hand...NO! I like Johnathan Winters, he's really funny and god rest his soul, but he gives an extremely bland narration and wooden performance. If you thought the Rankin/Bass narrators were kind of creepy, Johnathan is another exception to those celebrity caricatures. He's a tiny man who travels on Snow Flakes, really, could we just have a normal sized Johnathan Winters or were the writers high? Not just is the character bland and strange, but his design is scary and if I saw him riding a snowflake as a child, I'd hide under the covers, now I just want throw him out of town (I'd say "crush him" but I think it's a little to soon and harsh since the great Winters is dead).



Frosty is voiced by John Goodman who I think is an ok choice, however, instead sounding or acting like the character, he sounds like himself. Seriously, compare Frosty's voice to his old voice, it sounds like his snow testicles has dropped big time. Goodmen is great for voicing characters, but this is one performance I have to dismiss. By the way, remember in the original how taking off Frosty's Magic Hat makes him lifeless, it's completely ignored in this one. That's right the Magic Hat plot serves no purpose at all in this film, he can take it off as much as he pleases. Even his goodbye at the end wasn't because it was getting hot, it's because he wants to make new friends, what a bastard. It's not the end of winter, the snow isn't melting, and just when things are going right he leaves to make new friends, well I don't blame him, why, will get to that very shortly.



The song “Frosty The Snowman” is hardly ever played. In the opening we hear someone who sounds incredibly stupid humming the theme and go to an instrumental. We never hear the tune or the song again until Johanthan Winter’s annoyingly hums it to bring him to life. During the credits we get a really bad chorus of people screaming it loud. Just at least play Durante's version so we can at least feel like they're trying to make this feel like they're trying to make a classic. The only huge song in the movie is "Let There Be Snow" and to be honest it goes from trying to be good to something corny. When we first hear the song, we get an out of place wanna be musical number called "We Love The Snowman". When we hear John Goodman sing it, he sounds like he's trying to do good and almost succeeds until the song gets ruined by the villains rap song, to suddenly taking us back to John Goodman singing the song as if nothing happened. When we hear it in the finale, I found it to be very tiring, corny and annoying. The songs really do suck and all sound exactly the same (Except for Frosty's theme song).

The supporting characters have nothing compared to the original characters. The two kids Holly and Charles are so bland, so boring, so lifeless that is it no wonder why Frosty had to leave in such a hurry. I don't want to see two boring kids; I want to see Karen or at least one of the happy kids in the opening song. By the way, don't you find it weird that the kids go from loving snow to quickly ranting for no snow? The villain Mr.Twitchell voiced by Brian Doyle Murray, well to his credit he puts some life in his character, but his villain is all bark and no bite and he has a pointless sidekick which is a Cat. Other characters like Holly's Mom voiced by the funny Jan Hooks and Miss Carbuncle voiced by the energetic Andrea Martin come off as incredibly annoying than funny and clever casting.

 

The animation has to be one of the worst pieces of animation I've ever seen! The original had a simple, but Magical Christmas look; this is a crappy looking coloring book that looks more like a crappy copy of a Peanuts film. As a matter of fact it was done by animator Bill Melemdez who did some of the Peanuts cartoons (Which kind of explains why the leads look like Peppermint Patty and Marcy). It's dumb, it's messed up, it's not magical, it's very bland looking, and it's nowhere near creative. I can think of tons of flaws with the animation that even I noticed as a kid. When we see grass at the Winter Carnival, it's a cheap drawing where the grass makes it look like a green looking billboard than a landscape. Holly says there's "hardly any snow left on the ground", but they're literary standing on a whole ground full of snow. When people just walk by Frosty as he's moving and talking to Holly, no one seems to notice him, even when he's almost sprayed, no one can hear him scream when he's standing right next to them? Of course, the best what the heck moment is when Mr.Twitchell drives out of the way to avoid running over pedestrians and the next cut is him suddenly driving on top of an Ice Castle (How?) which causes him to crash in a small pond next to the Castle, and a minute later, he's in a lake with no Ice Castle next to it at all. What the heck?!

It's incredibly bad and boy I regret the many half hours I wasted as a kid by watching this crap. It's lame, it's bland, it's boring, it's corny, it's at times creepy, and the message it's trying to get across is not really delivered well. I have no idea how this special got to be part of the DVD releases of the original classic and you know what, I'll never know.

RATING 0/5