"The Town Santa Forgot" is an American television special for the holidays and this first aired back in 1993, so it will have its 25th anniversary next year. The director here is 6-time Emmy winner Robert Alvarez, so it should not be too surprising that this one here was nominated for an Emmy too, even if it came short and lost to a lesser known work. I personally did not enjoy the watch too much. The only thing I quite liked was the core plot idea about the people from the place thinking somebody gave them a huge gift and how it was supposed to renew the boy's thinking about the idea and spirit of Christmas. However, did this plan work out? Not really I would say. The transformation did not feel particularly realistic and one problem I had here was that really not one single character was particularly interesting that you would wonder what happens next to him. And this includes the main character especially. I think this film could have been cut into half the runtime really without anything being lost. And it could have been even shorter in the one-digit minute runtime area as honestly especially in the first half there were a great deal of scenes that felt forgettable. As for Dick van Dyke, the narrator here and biggest name attached to the project, he was solid too, but only stood out slightly because everything else was really nothing special, not because he was. Overall, this one gets a thumbs-down and it is certainly not the brightest half hour in animation from the 1990s. Not worth checking out, not even during the holidays.
Review of The Town Santa Forgot
