TV Guide Looks at Christmas

Lea Thompson hosts this TV-aired, TV Guide-sponsored, 20th Century Fox-clip heavy Fox TV production that revisits various holiday-themed classic animated shorts, feature films, sitcoms, and variety shows, including excerpts from the George C. Scott version of A Christmas Carol (one of the best), the wonderful Rankin-Bass classic Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer (a 1964 production wrongly referred to as the granddaddy of animated Christmas specials--Mister Magoo's Christmas Carol, not even mentioned here, predates it by two years), Frank Capra's perennial favorite It's a Wonderful Life, and select episodes from Bewitched, Cheers, and Frasier, among others. Many will quibble with major omissions (we get Fox's Home Alone, but not Warner's A Christmas Story), but ultimately this is all fairly tepid stuff--too breezy to offer much insight…or instill much holiday cheer. Ironically, the 13 minutes worth of extra interview footage included on the DVD provide more genuine charm (such as Bill Mumy admitting that he had a crush on Bewitched's Elizabeth Montgomery--hey, who didn't?) than the soundbites selected for the main program. Not a necessary purchase. Aud: P. (R. Pitman)