Pinocchio's Christmas

Filmed in Rankin/Bass's incomparable stop-motion animation technique, "Animagic", this special ranks right up there with "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" and "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town". Tricked by a mean fox and dim-witted cat, Pinocchio loses the money he planned to use to buy Pappa Gepetto a Christmas present (which he obtained by selling the arithmetic book Gepetto bought him). This begins a series of very amusing adventures. The Pinocchio character is so cute in this show....he's very mischievous but very lovable. Character and set designs are among the best from R/B and a great soundtrack thats bursting from the seams with wonderful songs. Another colorful and warm special from R/B.

Nope, it's not Disney or anything related to it. This is pure Rankin/Bass. This is one of their least talked-about specials. The story is about Pinocchio's first Christmas and how he basically screws up right and left. It's not one of the better Rankin/Bass Christmas specials, to be honest. I mean the story isn't that interesting to me. I didn't care that much for the characters and the voices, while adequate, didn't win me over. However, it does have some nice songs and the visuals are beautiful. The animation, the colors, the miniature sets are all gorgeous. Such detail. Amazing really. Anyway, it's somewhere in the middle of the pack as far as my ranking of the Rankin/Bass specials would go. But any Rankin/Bass is better than none and this certainly has enough going for it to recommend it.

A clay- animation film where Pinocchio tries to earn enough money for a Christmas present. And ends up teaching the spirit of Christmas. A good clay animation movie for children with up beat songs. Only objectionable part might be the lack of any mention of religion reasons for Christmas. On a personal note, at the end of the movie there was some fore-shadowing of Pinocchio's future adventures. Just curious if there was a other clay-animation about Pinoccio made?

I'd say yes. Not just their most underrated, but I think also one of their better Christmas specials as well. The visuals are gorgeous to look at, the colours just pop out at you in a positive way, there is so much detail in the backgrounds and the characters are incredibly convincing. The music is also spot-on, the scoring is lusciously scored and whimsical and all the songs are upbeat and sweet-natured. The writing has its fair share of funny humour, poignant heart and compelling drama without over-balancing. The story is constantly engaging for anybody, simple but very heartwarming storytelling and never dull. There is also a good message that didn't feel heavy-handed at all. It is also very easy to like the characters, they have personality and they're charming. And I don't think Pinocchio has been any cuter than here. The voice work is terrific. Overall, Rankin/Bass' most underrated special and one of their better ones as well. 10/10 Bethany Cox

Pinocchio's Christmas (1980)

*** (out of 4)

Another winning Rankin/Bass animated film has Pinocchio selling a book that Geppetto bought for him so that he can take the money and buy his father a Christmas gift. Along the way he's cheated out of the money by Fox and Cat and soon Pinocchio finds himself in an all new adventure. I really wasn't aware of this film before running into it on television and I must say that this was one of the better Christmas animations that I've seen. I'm a little surprised that the film isn't better known and just looking around it appears that most people haven't heard of the film, which is a shame. As usual, the animation is a major plus as all of the characters look terrific and I really love how much detail they actually put into Pinocchio. The amount of detail they give the character almost looks so good that you forget that it's not some sort of computer generated effect. Another major plus is the actual story that manages to contain some laughs, drama and of course a message for the kids. I enjoyed several of the flashbacks including a wonderful sequence where we see Geppetto getting the wood and carving what would become Pinocchio. With the commercials this here runs an hour but the added running time certainly pays off and the material is so rich that you really could have turned this into a feature-length film and it still would have been entertaining.