**DEFINITE SPOILERS AHEAD**
This tale of Jack Frost's brief foray into human existence and unrequited love is charming but has genuine heart, providing no simplistic answers about poverty or the plight of loving someone who does not love one back, but approaching the delicate issues of life's unfairness with compassion. A wonderful story.
Even today, I will remember the pretend game, in which people pretend they have been given exactly the gifts they would want, whenever I feel stressed about fiscal difficulties.
This Christmas special doesn't really fit in with the "literary folklore" of the rest of the Rankin/Bass winter holiday tales -- for example, this Jack Frost has nothing in common with Paul Frees's Jack Frost villain in "Frosty's Winter Wonderland" -- and I think that may be one of the reasons it hasn't done quite as well as it ought. Many Rankin/Bass stories tie in to each other so that seeing one of them will remind viewers of other stories as well, and that doesn't work for this story.
The one flaw is the groundhog character: no offense to Buddy Hackett, but even his voice acting wasn't able to save the groundhog character from being trite.
Worth seeing overall for the way Jack responds to his first experiencing of first material need and then emotional need.
This tale of Jack Frost's brief foray into human existence and unrequited love is charming but has genuine heart, providing no simplistic answers about poverty or the plight of loving someone who does not love one back, but approaching the delicate issues of life's unfairness with compassion. A wonderful story.
Even today, I will remember the pretend game, in which people pretend they have been given exactly the gifts they would want, whenever I feel stressed about fiscal difficulties.
This Christmas special doesn't really fit in with the "literary folklore" of the rest of the Rankin/Bass winter holiday tales -- for example, this Jack Frost has nothing in common with Paul Frees's Jack Frost villain in "Frosty's Winter Wonderland" -- and I think that may be one of the reasons it hasn't done quite as well as it ought. Many Rankin/Bass stories tie in to each other so that seeing one of them will remind viewers of other stories as well, and that doesn't work for this story.
The one flaw is the groundhog character: no offense to Buddy Hackett, but even his voice acting wasn't able to save the groundhog character from being trite.
Worth seeing overall for the way Jack responds to his first experiencing of first material need and then emotional need.