A Christmas Adventure

Ominously subtitled "…From a Book Called Wisely's Tales" (there may be more?), this unimpressively computer-animated Christmas tale uses the framing device of an owl named Wisely sharing a rather unremarkable story with a group of children. When a trio of circus animals fall from a train on a blustery Christmas Eve and come upon Santa and his reindeer, who are grounded due to low visibility (Rudolph, though mentioned, is inexplicably absent), the reindeer see the circus lion and immediately do the Self-Preservation Scatter. Teaming up with fellow evening wanderers Rock'n Raccoon (an obnoxious blowhard) and Honey Bunny (an anachronistically stereotypical wimpy female), Santa and the animals embark on a journey to retrieve the reindeer, and the story quickly devolves into a Saturday morning cartoon level action face-off between Santa's party and a roving band of wolves--a battle that takes up most of the second half of the program. In between fight scenes the characters mouth platitudes about the "true" meaning of Christmas (secular, of course, without even a mention of Christ) or take vague environmental potshots at man-in-the-forest. Neither wise nor witty, this is not a necessary addition to seasonal collections. Aud: P. (R. Pitman)