Decided a couple of weeks ago to try and find some Christmas themed animations that weren't the ones that were grown up on as a child and still loved. Have made no secret of loving Christmas and loving every bit as much animation, both for as long as can be remembered. Managed to track down three Christmas themed animations over the past few days, the others being 'White Christmas' and 'Silent Night' also from 1995.
Of the three, 'The Twelve Days of Christmas' for me was by far the weakest with it being the only one to not do much for me. It was interesting to see a story revolving around the famous Christmas song/carol, but it worked a lot better on paper than it did in execution. 'The Twelve Days of Christmas' is not awful, but it is not particularly good either and the story that revolves around the song isn't compelling or varied enough for my tastes.
There are good things. Did like the characters of the grandfather and the little girl, and their scenes are very charming. As is the grandfather's storybook-like narration, that doesn't intrude and is not overused. The lead character Billy also appeals. Some of the animation was quite nice, especially the Christmassy backgrounds. The 'Twelve Days of Christmas' song is timeless, and it is melifluously sung by Bing Crosby (it just isn't Christmas without hearing his voice at least once). Nice to hear the healthy dose of Borodin.
How Billy went about finding the objects that feature in the carol that are requested was quite interesting, as were what the objects looked like (i.e. Ladies dancing, drummers drumming being not what was expected). The voice acting varied, but did like the grandfather's and Billy's.
Less good was that for Elizabeth (bland with nothing particularly memorable) and the disapproving father (too blustery and over the top, jarring too much tonally with the soft spoken-ness of everyone else). Didn't find those characters particularly interesting, especially the former with her "too derivative of Belle" appearance and there isn't enough chemistry between her and Billy. The rest of the characters are too come and go to make much of an impression. The dialogue can be a bit too simplistic and it was clear it was too aimed at the younger crowd and not enough for the whole family.
While the music is great on its own, the placement consistently distracted. The title song worked wonders at the beginning, but using each verse at the end of every task came over cheesily and heavy-handedly. Again, hearing Borodin's music was great but it never really fitted with the action. 'White Christmas' and 'Silent Night' used pre-existing classical music too, but in those cases (especially 'Silent Night) they were part of what was going on and did fit. Here it felt too much like random incidental scoring.
Did feel that the story doesn't compel enough, while the song is repetitive Crosby's vocals at least had variety in how he sang and what he did to the melody. Whereas the story was literally an episodic series of tasks with little variation other than the objects and the bridging task setting which did feel repetitive. Also found it very thin, the special is nearly half an hour and the story could have easily have been done in half that time. Meaning that the latter portions drag from making some of the tasks unnecessarily longer and with one knowing what is going to happen it gets mundane.
Overall, watchable but pretty average. 5/10.
