Fantastic!

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

I was very struck by how good this festive cartoon looked, the rich small details in all the buildings and everything is gorgeous, especially the interior of Rudolph's house, where everything looks so warm and cosy, and the enchanting snow-covered scenes of classic Christmas joy were all so beautiful, in fact I'd say this is probably the most finely done artwork of snowy scenery I've seen in one of the Fleischer animations, it's definitely a fantastically coloured and drawn short...but I don't know, I really wasn't feeling it too much with this one, beautiful as it is, it really didn't grab me and give me that heartwarming feeling of holiday cheer and goodwill like in the Fleischer Christmas shorts "Christmas Comes but Once a Year" and "Somewhere in Dreamland" did. This just seemed a little stilted and weak somewhere to me. And that bothers me, because I love the Fleischer style of animation and especially enjoy their wintry animations a lot, but I guess I must be missing something with this one. If this truly was Max Fleischer's last ever animated short than as a big fan of his, I must say that this was far from the best of what he was capable of and a mere shadow of his earlier works. I think for me it's the reindeer, I found their design really weird and off-putting, they all look so spindly and feminine, and I found the image of them walking on two legs and wearing clothes to be quite freaky, the image doesn't work the way it's meant to. And I never cared for the moral of Rudolph, they make fun of his pretty glowing red nose until it's suddenly useful to them and then he's suddenly accepted, not for who he is but for what he can do! And there was something a little off about that Santa too, he wasn't fat enough, in fact he looked positively jacked under that red gear! He voice didn't sound jolly enough either, he sounded more like He-Man! The voice actor did a terrible job. All in all though I didn't hate this, it just didn't work for me, I found it most wanting. It's just a wholesome fluff piece and a good old fashioned nostalgic throwback to the children's Christmas tales of yesteryear... X

. . . by considering its anti-bullying theme (which would be right up the alley of First Plagiarist-Elect Melancholia T.). Some might criticize it for cheap, shoddy, clumsy animation, distorted sound, and uninspired story-telling, but we can't all be Looney Tunes. Others might trace the 21st Century Scourge of Dark Skies Vandalism and Anti-Airliner Terrorists armed with LASER pointers to RUDOLPH THE RED-NOSED REINDEER, but that would be a stretch. Maybe "Cannibalism" is not exactly the right word to characterize Santa's first Christmas Night Visit depicted here as being to a household of 40,000 reindeer (at least, that's the number of Rudolph's family members filling Donner Pass Stadium at the end of this cartoon), but there must be some apt term to cover this (not to mention these 39,999 hop-scotching, leap-frogging, ice-skating, and tree-climbing four-legged hoofers). However, since both 1948 and 2016 were U.S. Presidential Election Years (marking the two biggest upsets in American History), perhaps the main take-away here is that RUDOLPH climaxes with Santa appointing its young title character "Commander-in-Chief." It it just a coincidence that "Santa" can be rearranged to spell "Satan," as can the Cyrillic symbols denoting the Nom De Guerre of D.J. Trump's puppeteer, Putin (or that D.J. will surely join 1948's upset winner--Truman--as the ONLY U.S. "Commanders-in-Chief" to fire off nuclear weapons?)?

Considering this was placed on the live show for Rifftrax's Christmas shorts, it probably was the one with quality work put into it, at least compared to the others. There are certainly things that can be mocked about it, moments like when Santa Claus is literally patting the reindeer one after the other on the butts as they go out the door, or in some of the unintentional innuendo between Rudolph and Santa as the latter drafts the former to help him on his sleigh ride Christmas eve. But there is decent enough animation that makes it watchable outside of seeing it 'riffed', and I realized I actually had seen it before, at least at some point in my life, before seeing it here (why it didn't stand out exactly... well, it's not in stop motion for one thing). It's corny and cheesy, but for its time it's fine.

There is certainly no need to elaborate on the story of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" as it is so well-known, even over 65 years after this 8.5-minute cartoon was made. The director is Max Fleischer and he is certainly a name to many with an interest in these old brief animation movies. The narrator here is Paul Wing, his only effort in that position. I must say the voice acting was okay all in all, but I would have preferred an older actor to voice Rudolph as he does not look like a very young reindeer anymore and the voice actor here certainly still was very young. Anyway, this short film here is evidence that not only Warner Bros and Disney were the big players in the 1940s when it came to animation. I think this was a decent watch and with under 10 minutes, you cannot really do a lot wrong. Check it out during the holidays if you like. I give it a thumbs up.