Rudolph's Shiny New Year (1976)

Rudolph must find Happy, the baby New Year, before midnight on New Year's Eve.

Directors:

Jules Bass, Arthur Rankin Jr.

Writer:

Romeo Muller

Stars:

Red Skelton, Frank Gorshin, Morey Amsterdam

Cast

Complete credited cast:
Red Skelton	...	Father Time / Baby Bear (voice)
Frank Gorshin	...	Sir 1023 (voice)
Morey Amsterdam	...	One Million (O.M) (voice)
Harold Peary	...	Big Ben (voice)
Paul Frees	...	Santa Claus / Eon / General Ticker / Seventeen Seventy Six 'Sev' (voice)
Billie Mae Richards	...	Rudolph (voice) (as Billie Richards)
Don Messick	...	Papa Bear / Rumpelstiltskin / Prince Charming / The Seven Dwarfs (voice)

Storyline

Father Time sends Santa a message telling him that the baby new year, Happy, is missing! And without the baby new year, it'll remain the old year forever. But it's foggy and snowing, so Rudolph's the only reindeer for the job. Rudolph learns that Eon (ugly buzzard) is also searching for Happy, so that eon life will never end. With the help of 1 Million B.C. and Sir 1023, and 1776, Rudolph searches through the islands of the Archipelago of Last Year and races against eon to ensure a Happy New Year.

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Plot Keywords:

baby | snowing | time | archipelago | island | 

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Genres:

Animation | Adventure | Comedy | Family | Fantasy | Musical

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Certificate:

TV-G

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

10 December 1976 (USA)

Also Known As:

Ano Novo Brilhante de Rudolph

Company Credits

Production Co:

Rankin/Bass Productions

Technical Specs

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Color

Did You Know?

Trivia

The characters from the previous special do not appear in this one likely due to the fact that its copyright was questionable (because the special's copyright date was 1164, not 1964).

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Goofs

When Rudolph and his friends find Happy, Rudolph worries about getting him to Father Time's castle before the twelfth bong until Santa shows up in his sleigh. Since Rudolph is one of Santa's flying reindeer, he shouldn't need Santa or his sleigh to get to Father Time's castle.

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Quotes

[first lines]
Father Time: [singing to the tune of Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer] You know Rudolph who guided and pulled Santa's sleigh / and who saved Christmas by lighting the way. But there's more to tell / Rudolph saved the New Year as well.
[shifting to spoken dialog]
Father Time: And it all began that same foggy night.

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Connections

Follows Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town (1970)

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Soundtracks

What A Wonderful World We Live In
Performed by Red Skelton

User Reviews

Rudolph Saves the New Year, Too

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+