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Rudolph's Shiny New Year (TV) More at IMDbPro »

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16 reviews in total

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11 out of 12 people found the following review useful:
One of the first things I saw as a little kid- and it can stick with you, 2 December 2004

Author: MisterWhiplash from United States

Rudolph's Shiny New Year can be striking, and entertaining, if you're watching it when you're little - little enough that by the time you're my age you have no clear memory of the first time you watched it, just that you did over and over. As a kid you get introduced to claymation someway or another (even those of today who don't have Gumby get Wallace and Gromit), and this plays for a fine hour for the little ones, but can perhaps be of worth for the parents here and there. The story of Rudolph saving the "baby new-year" from the clutches of Eon, a vulture looking to keep December 31st on a loop, is pretty simple, with conflicts and characters that are typical and funny enough to take. But what can be memorable for a child is how some of this special is dark (with Eon) when it's not cute (most scenes with the baby). It's also interesting as a kind of sequel-cum-remake of the original Rudolph story, as the baby has to contend with having big ears- something that a child might find more relatable than a shiny nose. The songs are also a bit of a treat, if dated, and Red Skeleton does a fine double-job with the voicing of Father time and the little Bear on the island. Basically, it's the kind of special that is worth checking out with the kids for a few minutes, and if they get into it, it may prove a treat, and if not, there's still Nickelodeon.

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9 out of 12 people found the following review useful:
A Christmas Classic and yearly tradition, 13 December 2002

Author: PJ Kix from San Francisco, CA

This movie is awesome ... i haven't seen it in a few years but i always look forward to seeing it when it comes on. The characters are great and the story is very entertaining.

Baby new year is lost and time is running out to find him, the only one that can save the day is Rudolph. Baby new year runs away because he has giant ears and everyone makes fun of him except Rudolph cause he know's what it's like to made fun of for his red nose ... A classic moment is when Aeon the Terrible, big-beaked monster bird, captures baby new year and he almost dies laughing when the baby new year takes off his hat and reveals his giant ears.

There's some other great characters too, i remember an knight that helps Rudolph and an eskimo, a giant whale, the abominal snow man, and of course old man last year who is about to croak which is why they have to get baby new year back. It's some good stuff for the whole family.

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6 out of 8 people found the following review useful:
misses the point of original Rudolph Christmas special, 6 November 2003
Author: CineMage

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

**POSSIBLE SPOILERS ABOUT THIS AND OTHER CHRISTMAS SPECIALS AHEAD**

While I can enjoy the cheeriness of the tale, and Red Skelton is always a joy to behold, this special fails for me on two levels.

A minor quibble is the nakedly derivative storyline.

A serious quibble is that Rudolph is de-evolved from a young adult deer back to a child.

One of the wonderful aspects of the original "Rudolph the Rednosed Reindeer" special is that it functioned as a fairly honest coming-of-age story, a simplified but genuine bildungsroman for modern American children. A key moment is when Rudolph accepts the responsibilities and costs of becoming an adult. And it is the mature Rudolph, not the chibi cute li'l Rudolph, who is honored to lead Santa's sleigh. All this is negated when he suddenly reverts to childhood in this special in order to save the New Year.

I am disappointed when an emptily cute story constitutes the sequel to an intelligent coming-of-age fable, and that is what has happened here.

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3 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
Missing song by Father Time?, 2 December 2005

Author: bison257 from Indianapolis, IN

While not as good as either "Year Without a Santa Claus" or the original "Rudolph", this was still must-see TV when I was growing up. Since it's one-hour long (when broadcast), you get more bang for your buck than the many half-hour Christmas shows.

When watching this recently, it seems to me they cut one of Red Skelton's songs. Wasn't there a song titled "The moving finger writes...", where Father Time explains to Rudolph how Baby New Year grows into an old man by the end of the year? I have a distinct memory of that. Perhaps it shows up on the DVD? In a similar vein, there's a song I know they routinely cut from "Year Without a Santa Claus"--Mrs. Claus singing "Anyone Can Be Santa Claus". I realize that they're probably squeezing in more commercials than when I was a kid, & something is bound to get cut. Still.

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3 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
Rudolph Guided and Pulled Santa's Sleigh and Saved Christmas by Lighting the Way, But There's More to Tell: Rudolph Saved the New Year As Well!, 17 December 2002

Author: (robocoptng986127@aol.com) from U.S.A

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

[CONTAINS SPOILERS]

Santa Claus has just finished his Christmas deliveries on that very foggy night when suddenly he receives an urgent telegram from his old friend Father Time. The telegram stated he was in trouble because the baby new year had run away! If he isn't found by midnight, New Year's Eve, the old year would go on and on and it would be December 31st forever! But who could find anything in all that fog? Santa called on someone who was sure to help: Rudolph! Rudolph comes to Santa's castle and he tells him, "Rudolph, with your nose so bright, you've less than a week to set things right". So Rudolph ventures out into the storm along with General Ticker, one of Father Time's men. They soon make it to the Sands of Time. Father Time's castle was at the end of it. Rudolph and General Ticker hitch a ride courtesy of Quarter Past Five the camel, or Quart for short. Father Time tells Rudolph what's up and why Happy, the baby new year ran away: he had enormous ears. Whenever he removed his top hat, everybody burst out laughing at his ears so, very much hurt, he ran away. Father Time thinks that perhaps Happy went to the Archipeligo of Last Year, a group of islands that each hold a point in history. When a year's time is up, it goes off and becomes an island in this group and on that island, time stands still, in other words, there's a hell of alot of islands! Rudolph would have to search them all from 80,000,000 BC to 1965.

Rudolph meets someone else: Eon the nasty vulture. He was out to stop Rudolph from finding Happy because, see, Eon will only live to be one eon old then he'll turn to ice and snow so if December 31st goes on forever, so will he. Rudolph got help from Big Ben, a whale with a clock in his tale. Rudolph first arrives on the island of 1,000,000 B.C. where he meets O.M., short for One Million. He says Happy was on the island but left when the dinosaurs laughed at his ears. Rudolph and O.M. then travel to the island of 1023 where they meet Sir Ten Two Three, now this island is in the time where all the famous fairy tales actually took place, like Cinderella, Snow White, etc., Happy was at the Three Bears' home right then. The bear family returned home to find him asleep in Baby Bear's bed. Baby Bear became friends with Happy, but when they played a game that required Happy to remove his hat, the bears laughed at him and he left. Happy was then abducted by Eon. Luckily, Happy illuted his grasp and landed on the island of 1776 and met Seventeen Seventy Six, or Sev, who looks alot like Benjamin Franklin! Happy runs off again and Eon captures him and takes him to his hideout: a dark, unfriendly island where the sun never shines. O.M., Sir Ten Two Three and Sev feel it's hopeless, but Rudolph tells them to have a little faith in him. They reach Eon's island. Rudolph tells Happy that people laugh at his ears because they make them happy. Happy was happy. They used his ears to make Eon laugh himself silly. But all of a sudden: Big Ben's clock bonged midnight New Year's Eve! They were too late. Or were they? For right then, Santa Claus in his sleigh arrived. They jumped in and zipped to Father Time's castle before the twelfth bong. Happy was crowned the new year and all was happy and peaceful. 1976 had successfully arrived.

Pretty good follow-up of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer! Voices: Red Skelton is Father Time, our narrator and Baby Bear. Red is also a good singer, by the way! Frank Gorshin (the Riddler) is Sir Ten Two Three, Morey Amsterdam is O.M., Paul Frees is Santa, Sev, Eon and several others and Billie Richards reprises her role as Rudolph. But anyway, this New Year or Christmas, which ever you please, I recommend Rudolph's Shiny New Year!

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5 out of 7 people found the following review useful:
Rudolph again..., 2 December 2000
Author: gazzo-2 from United States

This is the one with the villainous Vulture, and where Rudolph gets trapped inside a big snowball. And the kid with the huge ears too...Well, it's not bad-Santa mixed with New Years and whatever-it doesn't quite hold up as well's 'Heat Mizer' or the first Frosty, but it's a fun watch for the family.

*** outta ****

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2 out of 2 people found the following review useful:
Rudolph Saves the New Year, Too, 12 December 2006

Author: brocksilvey from United States

This was included on the same DVD as "The Year Without a Santa Claus," and I must say that I don't remember this one at all from my childhood. It picks up where the original "Rudolph" left off. Rudolph has successfully saved Christmas, so he's charged with saving the New Year as well, sent off into the night by Santa Claus (who's really good at delegating, by the way), to find the New Year's baby, a bizarre little tyke with enormous ears who looks like Harpo Marx and wears a giant top hat. He's run away because everyone laughs at his ears; who better to find him and teach him the value of not taking life so seriously than Rudolph, he of the drunkard's nose?

I liked this one, though it features the least memorable music yet of this kind of animated film. Rudolph is joined by a soldier who's part clock and speaks in rhymed couplets, and a knight whose face we never see and who could be a character out of Monty Python. There's also a gloomy camel and my favorite character, a great whale who gives the group rides around the ocean and helps them chase down the scary monster bird (that's really its name) who wants to kidnap baby New Year so he can stop time and prevent himself from turning into ice (don't ask). Last but not least, Red Skelton fills narration duties as Father Time.

Like all of these films, even if they're not that great, they provide a certain nostalgic satisfaction to those of us who remember a time before computer animation.

Grade: B+

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1 out of 1 people found the following review useful:
There's A Reason Why It's DVD Bonus Material, 26 December 2011

Author: Steve Nyland (Squonkamatic) from New York, USA

This review may displease fans of these specials, and to them I apologize in advance. I've been trying to get myself to like this Rankin/Bass production now for about four years since obtaining it on DVD and may officially be throwing in the towel here. To each his own, my sense of nostalgia forces me to sit through it even if the enjoyment factor is somewhat low. I adore R/B's classic animation approach -- which is certainly not "claymation", by the way. The models are all composed of cloth, wood and other solid non-clay like materials formed on wire armatures. "Stop motion animation" would be the proper term, not that it really matters. Just being a nerd by pointing it out.

What does matter is that this time out the story is too oblique for its own good, a complex matter involving Rudolph brought in to find the infant New Year baby who decided it didn't like having its big ears made fun of and sports off in search of his own destiny. Rudolph, called in like an adjunct member of the Justice League, is quickly on the case. Along the way they encounter several barely memorable characters and a confusing string of events set to easily forgettable songs. Red Skelton's crooning of "Turn Back the Years" doesn't rate on the same scale as the accursed "Holly Jolly Christmas" or even "There's Always Tomorrow", my most hated of all the Rankin/Bass songs. Give me "Blue Christmas" any day over that please. At least those songs were worthy enough to inspire genuine disgust, the ones presented here are merely tedious or perfunctory.

In the end what may be condemning the effort in my eyes may be a lack of recollection of seeing the special as a kid. There is a direct relation to one's repeated exposure to this kind of entertainment as a tot and appreciation for it as an adult. The other Rankin/Bass heavyweights were routinely screened on the big three networks during my coming of age years but this one seems to have slipped through the cracks. Or, more likely, was aired on non-television nights in our family household. Imagine that, nights when the kids aren't allowed to watch TV. Parents would find themselves in court these days.

Then again my folks probably conceded that Rudolph, Burgermeister-Meisterburger and Heatmiser were too cool for them to deny us a look every year. Those specials resonated on a level that goes beyond nostalgia, where with this one the hook seems to be all about nostalgia for those prior efforts: Look! it's Rudolph! and we're in for another hour with his annoyingly whiny voice. Our devotion to that special was supposed to fuel by rote an equal devotion here but the effort falls flat with a complicated story (how again does the caveman end up in a snowball fight with Ben Franklin while the giant buzzard fights with the whale?), tepid songs and a general lack of inspiration. They gave it the college try with the usual stellar production design & threw in the kitchen sink with high profile guest roles, but to what avail? There isn't even a decent parody website sending the premise up, a key indication that it sort of flunked where general audiences were concerned.

Hence the special doesn't get its own DVD but ends up as a bonus feature on the "Year Without a Santa Claus" disc where it probably belongs, with the dreadful "Nestor the Christmas Donkey" which is a downright depressing bit of holiday drivel. Devotees of the Rankin/Bass formula will certainly want to seek it out but the prospect of it becoming a tradition in its own right is fairly low even with a lack of holiday specials specific to the new year. Maybe some holidays just don't inspire the same kind of outrageous imagination which resulted in the Heatmiser or the Grinch.

Though I will concede that lack of contact with the special as a kid likely played the determining factor here. Indeed if there is a new year holiday viewing tradition I do recall fondly it was the yearly screenings of "Its a Mad Mad Mad Mad World". Looked forward to it even if I didn't understand a damn thing, which oddly is how I regard this special now: I don't get it, mysteries give me a bellyache and life is short. The forty five minutes up for grabs here can be more happily assigned to a 2nd viewing of one of the masterpieces. Why waste time on a second stringer? But to each his own and I admit to watching it every year as well. Part of the yearly program even if I just don't get it.

4/10

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2 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
Great Holiday Classic, 23 August 2006
Author: Safari-1969 from Northeastern United States

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

From Rankin/Bass Productions comes Rudolph's Shiny New Year. In this one, Rudolph has be redesigned with a different voice. In the special, Rudolph has to find Baby New Year, who ran away after people made fun of his ears, or else Eon the evil vulture will steal him and there will be no new year.

On the way, Rudolph befriends General Tick, Sir Ten-to-Three, Big Ben, Sev, and One Million. Everything deals with time.

This is a worthy holiday treat to watch even before Christmas, it's well worth it, I try to catch it every Christmas ever since seeing back in the holidays of 2003.

Overall, it was funny and entertaining. Good job Rankin/Bass!

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2 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
Producers went the well once too often, 5 December 2005

Author: ktronis

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

It's pretty obvious that the producers of the original Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer TV special were trying to milk the concept once more. They should have quit while they were ahead.

As another person pointed out in their comment, at the end of the original Rudolph show, he had become a young adult. But, in this show, he is back to being a "kid" again. That's just the beginning of the weirdness.

The plot is quite confusing and muddled, including numerous character names that relate to dates and times. If a small child is watching, they might enjoy it simply for the animation. But, I cannot imagine trying to explain the plot and the characters to them.

You know a show is odd when you see a scene with Rudolph standing there with a Ben Franklin-lookalike, a caveman, and a knight in armor.

This story concept might have worked well on its own without Rudolph, playing on the "travelling through time" angle. But, what it has to do with Rudolph and the Christmas holiday, I'm still trying to figure out.

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