Rudolph mit der roten Nase 2 - Rudolph und der Spielzeugdieb

My 2-year-old is watching it at the moment in the other room -- and it's September.

The lyrics to the songs are complex to the point that I wonder how the actors got through them without switching to their normal voices, but I thought they were quite good, despite that.

The animation is not up to Shrek's standards, but would we want it to be? Photo-realistic animation would just detract from the story. As it is, the animation reminds me enough of the original stop-motion so that this indeed feels like a sequel.

The voice acting is marvelous: Rudolph and Hermey sound like they did in the original, and the other actors drop neatly into place around them.

As commented earlier, this takes the characters forward, instead of just repeating the identical behaviors in a different plot.

So, see it. You may find it a waste of time, but it's very much a mileage-may-vary thing, rather than a this-is-a-waste-of-celluloid thing.

I remember watching this when I was a young child, haven't watched it since. I didn't even think it was real.

You could tell this movie had it's heart in the right place, but just about everything else tells you this movie was slapped together without regard for visual appeal or even a good message for kids.

If you listen to the "director's commentary" (you'd think it would be a director's track, but instead it's only a 3-minute interview), they explain how this is the first time anyone on the team had done a computer-animated cartoon before, especially the B-movie director. And while this may have been cute as a bunch of student projects tied together, the whole mess just doesn't belong.

Can't be called a sequel if it has nothing to do with the first, can it?

I was not happy with the sequel, although I liked the concept of the movie I did not think it fit well as a sequel to the original. Rudolph and Clarice seem to have reversed the aging process by a few years, also the elf in charge who at the end of the original had a dental appointment with Hermy seems to have forgotten that and is mad and disappointed all over again. I feel the plot and story are fine I just don't think they should have tried to tie it to an almost forty year old classic.

Six years after Toy Story turned the animation world upside down, this movie fails to live up to that standard, even though the animation isn't terrible. You have to be looking for faults to notice them, and some critics simply made up complaints ... such as a critic who claimed the characters had no shadows. Completely untrue.

The look of these animated characters is very, VERY like the look of the models in the 1964 original, and that's a positive touch all in itself. They also sound very similar, and a few sound identical.

The musical numbers don't match up to the original, but the story is okay, if it drags a bit. It probably would have been better slotted for a one hour time slot, which would have tightened this up considerably.

It's worth a forgiving look by fans of the original, and it's certainly okay for kids anyway. We won't be watching it a second time, but I'm not sorry I saw it.