A postman despatched to a faraway frozen outpost befriends a vaguely familiar bearded toymaker in this festive origins story
This
Netflix release suggests the company intends to cover all our entertainment bases eventually. Here’s an old-school, PG-rated animation, encompassing some digital wizardry, but generally clinging to a nostalgic, hand-drawn look, with a late-blooming
Christmas theme. The director is the seasoned Sergio Pablos, who contributed to Disney’s Hercules and Tarzan and co-wrote Illuminations’ Despicable Me, and now assimilates several of those titles’ most appealing aspects. It also represents a half-decent attempt to revive the angular character design and irreverent humour
Disney abandoned after the commercial failure of the underrated The Emperor’s New Groove.
Disney’s current stewards would presumably also have nixed the dismal arctic location to which our jabbering postman hero Jesper (voiced by Jason Schwartzman) is exiled. Introduced in a striking foggy monochrome (“You should see it in the spring,” mutters sarcastic ferryman Norm Macdonald, “That’s when those greys really pop”), Smeerensburg is no magical kingdom, rather a frozen backwater.