While this special will never measure up to the beloved "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" (can any special do that??) - it is fun to watch, especially if you are a fan of the original. Its nice to see all the characters from the Rankin/Bass classic come back and you can tell that whoever made this film paid a lot of attention to the original. This is much more than I can say for the other "Rudolph" film that came out a few years before this one or the abysmal "Frosty Returns"! The songs are hit-or-miss, some are pretty bad and some are quite good (for example the one that the Hippo sings). It also has a lot of heart and does capture the spirit of Romeo Mueller's heartwarming writing. The only major complaint I have is that this should really have been done in stop-motion puppet animation instead of cheap computer-animation which already looks dated only a few years after its release. I'm sure it would have garnered a much better response if it had been done in the same style of animation as its predecessor.
