Jack Frost (1979)

Being a great admirer of Rakin/Bass I was surprised that I never heard of it. Then to my great pleasure to disappointment I was able to watch it. The stop motion is stunning like previous one and the plot had promise but then it just got bland. Jack Frost a winter sprite giving joy in January falls for a human girl who's family and other people are being oppressed by a cruel leader. Jack is able to become human for a short amount of time but in order for it to be forever he must get a house, a horse, a pile of gold, and a wife. Jack fails to gain a wife because the young woman he falls for goes for a knight that she barely met causing him to become an immortal sprite again. Oh and the whole story is being told by a groundhog on why we get six more weeks of winter or have an early spring. The visuals are quite nice but the story is bland, tedious, and less than engaging. The characters aren't that likable, relateable, or memorable. If you must watch it, watch it once or twice just to say you have. I got bored with it and it was becoming a chore to watch.

Though they can be kind of cheesy, I adore the majority of the Rankin-Bass stop-motion stuff. They don't require "adult humor" or hip cynicism to be entertaining, and they possess a sort of innocence I miss in family entertainment.Though it's not as celebrated as the other RB specials, Jack Frost (1979) is among the best of the lot. It's far from being a downer though; the songs are catchy and the characters are all appealing (though I found Holly to be rather useless and her voice actor was laughably wooden).The most unique aspect of it is its bittersweet ending, where the hero does the right thing but does not get what he wanted. It doesn't kill the humorous, whimsical nature of the production, but it is refreshing and still remains a rarity in family fare.If you get the chance to see it on TV, then don't miss it.

As I really like/love so much of Rankin/Bass' output, I realised that I had not seen Jack Frost. Being intrigued by the story concept, I knew I wanted to see it. And I really liked it on the most part, it is not a classic in the vein of Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer, Santa Claus is Comin' To Town, Frosty the Snowman, The Little Drummer Boy and The Year Without a Santa Claus, nor did it need or try to be and it is much better than it's given credit for. If there was anything I wasn't crazy about it was the groundhog Pardon-Me-Pete, who I find a trite character who fills the role of narrator but with not much personality or warmth(I know not all Rankin/Bass narrative characters have to be like Sam the Snowman for example but still). By all means Buddy Hackett does try hard but his character doesn't really allow him to play to his strengths and he does have a couple of jokes that fall flat.I personally much enjoyed the music though, the scoring is whimsical and dynamic. The songs are also lovely with the exception of the train-wreck that is I've Got a Day Named After Me. I found that the lyrics were really uninspired, the melody forgettable and stylistically jarring to the rest and Hackett's vocals consisted of singing painfully out of tune when he wasn't talking his way through the song. It's Lonely Being One of a Kind and There's The Rub were the ones that stood out to me the most, the latter as a matter of fact is in my head right now. The animation is beautifully crafted, every bit as accomplished as the earlier Rankin/Bass classics with backgrounds full of intricate and atmospheric details and colours that positively leap out at you.When it comes to the writing, Jack Frost is not one of the best in this regard(the best written for me is still Santa Claus is Comin' to Town) but it does at least maintain interest and is well-intentioned and sweet. The story didn't bore me in any way, there are some great ideas here, such as with the ice money, snowflake makers, snow gypsies and a knight in golden armour, and I was too engrossed in the story's imagination, charm and fun to really care about whether it made sense or not or whether it was propaganda(as I've seen it cited). The ending is different to what you'd expect, but it was refreshing to not have a "sugarcoated" ending once in a while and it was really quite touching. The characters are memorable apart from Pardon-Me-Pete, I found myself immediately liking and identifying with Jack, Dummy is hilarious and Kubla Kraus looks and sounds like Burgermeister Meisterburger as a cossack but is lots of fun all the same.The voice acting is very good, Paul Frees as Kubla Kraus, Father Winter and Dummy is simply genius. Robert Morse brings an appealing chirpish charm to Jack and Debra Clinger a youthful sweetness to Elisa. All in all, very under-appreciated if not one of the studio's very best. 8/10 Bethany Cox

Watched this post-Christmas-dinner by accident on PPV (I thought it was something else) and discovered why it's never shown on network television any more: A complete lack of racial sensitivity, political correctness, or a single verse that didn't make you simultaneously cringe and laugh (and not in a good way).The villain is basically a Stalin character (red outfit, black beard, starving the peasants, etc.); snow is made by 'gypsies'; the 'parents' have eastern European accents but the 'kids' don't (they may live in some impoverished Russia-like country, but apparently the kids are second-generation Americans). My husband remarked that the whole thing was a classic 'evil overlord vs the poor peasants' kind of Communist manifesto.I personally was more annoyed by the simultaneous existence of King Arthur's knights and iron horses and the horrible, horrible songs.I'm thinking that if you first saw this as a child of 5, watching it by the Christmas tree on a countdown to Christmas Eve sometime during the Cold War, you may have some fondness for it. Otherwise, steer clear.