We did it! We finished all of our Christmas movies before Christmas! Hooray for us!!!Out of all the great Christmas Classics, this is definitely the best. It's got the perfect mixture of songs, magic, and celebrity! Fred Astaire stars as the narrator/postman and Mickey Rooney plays ole Kris Kringle himself.
There is a super gloomy town aptly named Sombertown that totally has a German feel to it. The leader of the town is Bergermeister Meisterberger, a crochety old man who upon finding a baby on his doorstep sends the baby to be banished off into the unknown. The cute little ginger baby ends up finding its way into some scary woods where it is abandoned. The helpful woodland animals take the baby to a small cottage on the other side of the mountain and past a magical rainbow river. Here a cute family of old elves resides. These are the Kringles!
The Kringles are so cute. Their voices are so high and funny, and they have one of the best songs in the movie. They raise Kris as their own and he learns the family business of toy making. His woodland friends also teach him how to slide and laugh like a seal, climb like a squirrel and leap like a dear. Once he grows up to be a man, he decides he is going to cross the mountain to deliver toys to the children in Sombertown. while crossing the mountain he meets his new best friend, a scarfed penguin named Topper. He also draws the attention of the evil Winter Warlock who vows revenge upon his return through the mountain.
Earlier, Bergermeister Meisterberger slipped on a toy and broke his funny bone, and has thus outlawed toys, claiming them to be immoral and unlawful.
In Sombertown, Kris sticks out like sore thumb. Everyone is dreary and sad looking, even some of the children have grey hair!He's a lively young man dressed in red from head to toe. The kids teach Kris about their duties of chores, including washing and hanging their stockings by the fire. He breaks out the toys and everyone celebrates. Then he gets chided by the school teacher Jessica and learns about the no toys rule. He leaves town promising more toys in secret.
He meets this Winter Warlock and befriends him, and with friendship the Warlock's icy heart is melted away. Toys make everything better! Winter doesn't believe that he can truly become good, and so Kris sings him a song about how its as easy as putting one step in front of the other. Up until this point in my life I thought that this song was about Kris teaching Winter how to walk again because he was just a scary old man who never left his ice castle. Oops.
After many attempts of Kris delivering toys and them getting confiscated the next day, he finally realizes the best method is to sneak down the chimney and put the toys in the stockings. Jessica helps deliver messages between the kids and him. One night Bergermeister Meisterberger finally catches Kris. He also arrests Winter and the Kringles. Jessica uses some magic feed she got from Winter to make reindeer fly. This somehow breaks the toy making gang out of a dungeon.
They are on the lamb for quite a while. Kris and Jessica get married, and he grows a beard and changes his name to his birthname Claus. They wander and find their way to the North Pole where they set up a permanent shop. Kris and Jessica both age and become their plump Claus selves that we all know and love. He was delivering toys like 4 times a year, but just couldn't keep up with the demand so he decided to make it just once a year. The Bergermeister rule eventually dies off and people forget about their toyless days.
Andrew's Closing Thought: I'm so glad we're done with Christmas movies...and he loves me so much!
Up Next: Alice in Wonderland (We will now go back to our normal rotation, and backtrack through the alphabet to some new movies we recently got)
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