Having been raised on such holiday chestnuts as Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, A Charlie Brown Christmas, Frosty the Snowman, and scores of other treasures from the unmatched Rankin-Bass factory, I’m always a little skeptical when a new special tries to worm its way into the canon (Shrek the Halls? Ugh.) Disney Prep & Landing, however, is a truly worthy addition to the holiday specials of ole, and if you missed it when it first aired last week, you have another chance when ABC encores it tonight at 8pm (and again on Christmas Eve; it's also available on abc.com).
Prep & Landing introduces us to Lanny, an elf assigned to get houses ready for Santa’s arrival, a task that involves extinguishing fires in the fireplace, making sure the cookies don’t contain nuts, and transporting would-be attack dogs into a magical slumber. Passed over for a promotion in Naughty List Intelligence, Lanny is grousingly paired with a new trainee, Wayne, a dimbulb who doesn’t even know how to open a door but who you just know is going to help save the day in the end. In this case, Lanny and Wayne have to help Santa land at a house in the middle of a blizzard lest the young boy who lives there gets passed on by. It's a charming tale told with a degree of sophistication and humor that doesn't stray into cynical and/or ironic territory, the M.O. of so much family entertainment these days.
The computer animation in Prep & Landing, Walt Disney Animation Studios' first-ever special produced specifically for ABC, isn’t quite up to Pixar levels, but it has more sensory realism to it than Dreamworks’ more cartoonish CG films do. Is it fair to compare a TV special to a feature film? Here it most definitely is, as the creators have gone out of their way to ensure that the voice talent, including Dave Foley (NewsRadio) as Lanny and Derek Richardson (Men in Trees) is in top form, and the score by Michael Giacchino has an ambitious cinematic flair not usually heard in a Christmas special. Do yourself a favor and take thirty minutes out of your busy holiday schedule to settle in with these delightful Christmas elves. You wouldn't want to end up with a lump of coal in your stocking, would you?
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