The Great Santa Claus Caper

It’s a bit hard to review this mess as there’s not much there to speak about. The plot makes zero sense, even going by the wide margins of which we accommodate Christmas specials tied to merchandised characters, and the whole thing consists of only a handful of scenes with little in the way of wit or creativity that sparkles in the best of Chuck Jones’ work.

Raggedy Ann and Andy in The Great Santa Claus Caper begins with a breaking of the fourth-wall by a Wil E. Coyote dollar store knockoff, Comet the reindeer overhearing his ramblings, and deciding that the best backup for this mission are a pair of rag doll siblings. It’s idiotic and muddled from the outset, with nothing truly at risk here. Jones did better work tackling the behemoth of Christmas and its emotional meanings years earlier, and subsequent dips into the same well turned up increasingly drier.

At least the gentleness and quietness of Johnny Gruelle’s work was translated for this, but that also means that there’s nothing much to keep your interest. Our big bad wolf wants encase Christmas presents in thick plastic, turn around and force kids to buy the solvent for it, and make them buy their Christmas presents. Comet is horrified, scoops up the rag doll duo plus their rag doll pooch, and jets them back to the North Pole where they talk the big bad wolf into being good? Then have a Peter Pan stage show moment where they ask the children watching to scream along with them? Look, it’s weird and obtuse.

Some of my aversion to this could be that I never “got” the appeal of Raggedy Ann and Andy. There’s just not much dramatic potential there with these characters. They’re so impassive and nondescript that Jones has to inject some borrowed lunacy from his more famous creations to liven things up, and that only goes so far. The Great Santa Claus Caper is justifiably forgotten and regulated to a mere curiosity in the collected works of Chuck Jones.