The DVD copy of the classic Rankin/Bass Easter Special that I own played itself more as a promotional tool for the sequel than it did as a re-release to an Easter classic. Why do I say this? Well, for starters, there's a special promotional behind the scenes trailer to the sequel that can only be accessed before reaching to the DVD's main menu. There's a Special Feature on the DVD where you can view a clip of one of the musical numbers in the sequel. And on top of it, the DVD box itself even promotes that the DVD includes a sneak peek of the Special's sequel. It can't get any more evident than that. As I took a look at the trailer, while I found the casting of voice actors such as Christopher Lloyd, Roger Moore, Molly Shannon, and Tom Kenny to be amusing choices; the film itself didn't seem too pleasing. The CGI animation looked creepy. The casting of voice actors didn't seem like the right choice to fill in the shoes for the previous actors who voiced these characters. The overall modern-day look and feel with its music and humor just didn't seem to match the atmosphere or world that the original Special had created. And the film just seemed like a manipulative marketing tool purely made for the money than it was paying a loving tribute to one of the most fabulous Easter Specials of all time. However, since the DVD that I have loves to promote the crap out of this sequel, I've decided to review the sequel this Easter to see if it's as bad as I thought it was going to be. Is the sequel a cheap cash-grab that came out too late? ON WITH THE REVIEW!
Peter Cottontail, who is now officially the new Chief Easter Bunny of "April Valley," has a son named Junior. Junior spends most of his time making inventions that don't work rather than attending to his duty at the factory where they make Easter Candy. Peter decides to give his son the critical job of cleaning the "The Clock Of Spring" (Which is a magical clock that provides us with Spring) to get his mind off of making silly inventions (Which I'm sure that Junior won't screw-up that job). As Peter is having issues with his son, Peter's arch-enemy Irontail returns to "April Valley" (Which makes no sense since the last time we saw him, he became a member of the "April Valley Sanitation Department"). Only this time, he teams up with the mischievous Jackie Frost the Snow Fairy to sabotage the "The Clock Of Spring," as well as all the other clocks of different seasons to spread a permanent Winter. They succeed with their plan of sabotaging "The Clock Of Spring" thanks to Junior being easily manipulated by Irontail (A rabbit who looks and acts so unpleasant that kids in the original Special were smart enough to avoid him). Feeling guilty, Junior runs away from "April Valley" to try to set things right. Along the way, he meets a young Robin who has trouble flying; a mouse who loves to eat almost anything; a goofy talking cloud; and his father's old Peddler friend Seymour S. Sassafrass (And no Junior does not use Sassafrass' time machine that was used in the original Special to prevent Irontail from destroying the Clock, nor is it even mentioned).
Christopher Lloyd narrates the film as the magical Peddle Seymour S. Sassafrass that Danny Kaye voiced in the original Special, and aahhh man, what did they do to you Seymour? He looks like the Mad Hatter from "Alice In Wonderland" who suddenly decided to dye his hair green. He looks nothing like the Willy Wonka like Peddler that Danny Kaye had voiced in the original Special. I'm guessing the reason why they changed his design was that the original character was modeled after the actor who voiced him and probably didn't have the right to use Kaye's likeness to the role. While I understand the reason for why they had to change the character's image and voice, did they really have to make him the same character? Wouldn't it make more sense to have this character be some kind of relative to the original person, instead of completely changing the character's image and hiring an actor who sounds and acts nothing like the character that we're familiar with? I just find it incredibly hard to buy that this is supposed to be the same character that we met from the original Special. I will, however, give Lloyd credit for acting for the most part subtle instead of resorting to his over the top eccentric self, even if it isn't enough to save this out of character portrayal of Seymour S. Sassafrass. Believe me when I say that if Lloyd was voicing a completely different character in this sequel, I honestly would be okay with it since his performance is pretty decent.
Voicing both our leading character Junior and his father Peter is Tom Kenny who's famous for voicing many iconic cartoon characters, including the famous Nicktoon Spongebob Squarepants! While Kenny has voiced characters that you wouldn't have guessed were voiced by the same guy who voiced Spongebob, here you do get that impression, especially for his portrayal of Junior. It's not just that his voice sounds very identical to his Spongebob character. It's also because the character's goofy, optimistic, and childlike personality is very similar (Though not as over the top) to Spongebob's personality. Plus giving the character giant bright blue eyes along with those big buck teeth doesn't help much either. It's pretty distracting for how similar the design resembles Spongebob. Even without noticing the similarities between these two characters, the character himself is not that interesting either. Though it could be worse, at least Junior isn't as obnoxious as Spongebob is in the later seasons of the show. As for Kenny's portrayal of the character Peter Cottontail, he hardly ever captures the spirit, the cuteness, and the charm of the original character. I guess it is because his character has matured and grew-up since time has passed after the events from the first Special. But even with that being the case, I still don't find myself buying that this is the same Peter Cottontail from the original Special. In fact, why not get the original actor Casey Kasem to voice Peter again? He was still doing voice-overs at the time of the film's release, and it would seem like a welcoming return for him to voice the Easter Bunny that we grew up watching. I'm not saying casting Kasem is going to save the Special, but at least he would capture a little bit of the spirit from the classic Rankin/Bass Easter Special if he were cast for the role.
Filling in the shoes of Vincent Price as the villain Irontail is former Bond actor Roger Moore. As interested as I was in seeing a Bond actor play a scheming over the top villain that was once voiced by the incredible Vincent Price, the pay-off was pretty disappointing. While Moore does carry the class and elegance that Irontail had in the original Special, he doesn't have that vicious and nasty personality that Price gave to the character in every single scene he's in. He acts way too calm and collected and doesn't even laugh as much as Price did in the original Special, which feels entirely out of character. When we're first introduced to Irontail, we get a forced James Bond reference of him saying "The name's Tail, Irontail" as we hear Bond-like music in the background before his reveal! That doesn't sound like something that the character would say in the original Special! That was just a forced inside joke thrown in to make the reference since Moore was famous for playing James Bond. Voicing his partner in crime, Jackie Frost is SNL star Molly Shannon, who is just a cheap knock-off of Jack Frost that carries a very wooden personality that's hardly ever funny. The chemistry that she and Moore share is pretty dull too. The only time I ever found the two of them fun together is when Jackie Frost questions if Irontail was actually his real name. And while it was funny at first, the joke suddenly got ruined when we find out that his real name was Fluffy which becomes a cheap running gag throughout the Special. Also the joke itself is very confusing, since the original Special already gave him a name which was January Q. Irontail. Shouldn't she be asking what Irontail's last name originally was, since he already has a first name? I also didn't like the idea of showing Irontail's origins story in the style of a home movie. That just felt like a desperate attempt to get a laugh.
The rest of the characters from the original Special don't resemble the characters we remember that much either. The caterpillar Antoine who we last saw as a butterfly in the original Special, is now suddenly back to being a caterpillar who has turned purple and is up to scale with the rest of the bunnies in "April Valley" for unexplained reasons. Did anybody making the film try to call out on this distracting flaw? Did they not care or remember that Antoine turned into a butterfly who was not up to scale with the rest of the characters? Kenny, by the way, also does the voice for Antoine, and he is sadly nowhere near as funny or as likable as the character was in the original. Antoine's presence just feels there as more of an afterthought. Another original character from the previous Special who appears in this sequel is Irontail's bat-henchman, Montresor. And just like Antoine, he too has a totally different design, who is now for some reason too small for Irontail to ride on, which I'm sure that nobody ever remembers seeing him ride around on his trusty bat-henchman in the first Special. When it comes to the new cast of supporting characters, I honestly didn't find any of them charming. The little Robin, who has trouble flying that is supposed to be a kid, is voiced by Kenan Thompson, who sounds way too grown-up to be voicing something that's supposed to be young, cute, and innocent. And the humor that he provides with his loud and obnoxious personality is far from ever being funny. We then have Miranda Cosgrove as the little mouse Munch who surprisingly does fit her character fine, but unfortunately, the character herself is nothing special. Even her running gag of wanting to eat everything that's supposed to give this character some kind of identity feels pretty downplayed. The cloud of Wind that tries to help the characters on the journey voiced by David Koechner is just as obnoxious as Thompson is with voicing his character, and with a completely ridiculous design, as opposed to being creative. He almost looks like the Octopus (With Dopey's goofy face from "Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs") who serves the drinks at the bar in "Ink And Paint Club" in the film "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?". As for the other characters like Peter's assistant, Junior's two bunny friends; Peter's Wife (Who isn't Donna); and the Penguin henchmen that work for the two villains. I hardly remember any of them since they leave little to no impression of how lacking they are in terms of character, humor, and on-screen appearance.
Now I will admit, as crude-looking as the CGI is, it's not the worst. Its bright and colorful, the 2-D animation backgrounds with the CGI animated characters in the center of it looks decent, and some of the winter scenes do look pretty nice. And I'm not going to completely fault the CGI for looking crude either because the Stop-Motion for the original Special, while it did create it's own unique look and feel (Like all the other Rankin/Bass Stop-Motion Specials). The use of Stop-Motion was also pretty crude looking as well! What I do however fault the CGI animation for is for how little the character designs and the world itself resemble the original Special that this Special is a continuation of (That comes complete with clips from the original Special, incase if you forgot what the first Special looked like!). In a computer-animated sequel to another famous Rankin/Bass Special Holiday Special, which was "Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer And The Island Of Misfit Toys" that came out a few years before this Special for example. Despite that the sequel was animated in CGI, and made decades a few after the original Special. It for the most part stayed true to the character's original designs and world where they live in, as they found voice actors who sounded like the original actors that previously voiced them. They were also smart enough to replace the Burl Ives Snowman with a different Snowman character, since they either couldn't use Ive's likeness, or find a voice actor who sounded exactly like him. In this CGI animated sequel to a famous Holiday Special created by Rankin/Bass, this Special doesn't do any of the things that the CGI animated sequel to "Rudolph" did. The designs for the characters, aside from a few tiny features that resemble the original character, all look totally different. The voice actors they hired sound and act nothing like the original characters that we remember. And the land of "April Valley" looks 100% different from the one shown in the previous Special. I also find the animation for the giant eyes on the characters to be incredibly soulless. When it comes to songs, I'm not going to waste my time talking about them since they all just sound like bland modern-day Pop-tunes that sound the same, and don't at all fit within the film's fantasy world! It also doesn't help either that the last scene of the movie involves the characters playing a modern rock version of the song "Here Comes Peter Cottontail" with instruments as a way to try to appeal to its young and hip crowd!
My overall instincts on this CGI sequel being bad based on my viewings of the trailer were exactly right! As much as this Special references the original Special, it fails to capture the spirit of it. The designs for the characters and its fantasy world hardly ever looks like the original designs that were created in the original Special. The voice acting while not all that bad, they still don't sound anything like the characters that we know and love. Every single song in this Special suck and feel out of place with its modern-day use of Pop-Music. The humor is dull and obnoxious. And the new characters and locations that we encounter (Including the new design for "April Valley) are very bland. However, as much as I despise this Special for failing as a sequel, I honestly don't think this is one of the worst things that I've ever seen. It's terrible and fails on so many levels as being a continuation to an Easter Special that I hold close to my heart, but there's nothing in it that I find to be that insultingly cringe-worthy, or annoyingly irritating about it for that matter. I can't even say that it was all that dull or boring either! There are indeed much worse sequels out there that I can think of that make me sick to my stomach for how bad and insulting they are. This film is just a poorly put together bland sequel that doesn't deserve to exist, but it in the very least, has, for the most part, a harmless and cute look and feel to it with some beautiful colorful animation and decent voice acting. It's still a bad movie that I don't at all recommend (Especially to fans of the classic Stop-Motion Special), but it's nowhere near 0 out of five bad either.
RATING 1/5
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