Brer Rabbit's Christmas Carol

Title:
Brer Rabbit’s Christmas Carol
 
Format:
Straight-to-video animated special
 
Country:
USA
 
Production company:
Magic Shadows
 
Year:
1992
 
Length:
56 minutes
 
Setting:

Fantasy
 
Background:
Brer Rabbit (or more correctly it perhaps ought to be Br’er Rabbit) is a character from African-American folklore – a trickster who uses his wits to survive, with the writer John Chandler Harris later writing well-known versions of the stories of Brer Rabbit which had previously been passed down by oral tradition. Disney later adapted some of his stories into the film Song of the South in the 1940s, which given the content of the film has somewhat tarnished the reputation of both Harris and his version of the stories.

Brer Rabbit himself, however, remains a popular figure in American folk mythology and children’s stories. This particular interpretation, placing the character in an adaptation of the Carol, was made as a straight-to-video animation in 1992. The makers, a company called Magic Shadows, don’t appear to have done a great deal else and are difficult to find out much about.
 
Several of the cast and crew of Brer Rabbit’s Christmas Carol had been involved with a previous Brer Rabbit release, Brer Rabbit Tales, which had come out the preceding year. This was credited to Emerald City Productions, a Dublin-based company who’d produced a variety of animations based on well-known (and mostly handily out-of-copyright) stories since the late 1980s, although Emerald City had been sold in 1991 and its founders had concentrated on their work back in the USA.
 
Cast and crew:
Christopher Corey Smith stars as the eponymous Brer, and has had a long and extensive career in voice roles for all kinds of animations. This has included English-language dubs of various Japanese anime, and being the voice of the Joker for several Lego Batman computer games. Of the other three credited cast members, Ginny Tyler has the highest-profile credits, with voice roles in high-profile films such as The Sword in the Stone and Mary Poppins. David Kell had appeared in various on-screen roles in many US television shows, while Tom Hill has only a handful of voiceover credits to his name. Both Tyler and Hill had, however, appeared in the previous year’s Brer Rabbit Tales release.
 
That 1991 animation had been written and directed by Jean Mathieson and Al Guest, who were the founders and driving forces of Emerald City. Mathieson was a pioneering Canadian animator, and she and Guest had been working on animated productions together in their native Canada and in Hollywood before the decision to set up in Dublin. Evidently the previous year’s Brer Rabbit venture had been successful enough for them to be hired to create this follow-up, even though they no longer had their own company.
 
Underdone Potato:
This does have one rare and notable feature about it, in that there are actually no ‘real’ ghosts in this version. Much like the tale told in the Bugs Bunny version, this is actually a story of an animal – another rabbit, of course – organising a ‘fake’ version of A Christmas Carol to try and scare another character into changing his ways.
 
A Christmas Carol and Charles Dickens do actually exist in the fantasy world the animals inhabit – we learn that a benefit performance of the story is being put on at the local playhouse on Christmas Day to raise money for poor ‘Timmy Mouse’, who’s ill. Which actually raises some odd questions about the story having ‘real world’ parallels with what’s happening in the lives of the animas, but let’s not go too deeply into that! It also doesn’t seem to be the best-organised performance in the world, given that it’s happening the next day but Brer Porcupine is still able to just stroll up to Brer Rabbit and be casually given the part of Tiny Tim.

The Scrooge analogue here is Brer Fox, a local wood merchant who’s generally mean-spirited and has also tricked his rather stupid Bob Cratchit figure, Brer Bear, out of his home so that he can turn it into a goldmine. Overhearing this, Brer Rabbit organises a meeting of all the townsfolk, where they arrange to trick Brer Fox with a haunting.
 
So they sneak off to Fox’s house in the middle of the night, using an array of props and costumes and the vocal talents of Brer Magpie to convince him he’s being haunted. Brer Rabbit (and a carved pumpkin head on a stick…) takes a sort of Master of Ceremonies role as a generic Christmas ghost, but there is an appearance from a Marley equivalent in the form of shadow hand puppetry and Magpie’s voice convincing Fox that his old partner Brer Wolf is back from the grave.
 
There’s also a weird B-plot element introduced, were dumb old Bear is – for reasons which are never even attempted to be explained – heading over to Fox’s in the middle of the night to give him his Christmas present. Seeing the ‘ghosts’ through the window he decides to try and help save Fox from them (as he’s stupidly loyal), and ends up heading off to the swamp to get some anti-ghost potions from Brer Gator.
 
I’m not quite sure what Dickens would have made of all that…
 
Past:
In an element of the script which really stretches the credulity of things to breaking point – even within the confines of the fictional universe we’re in, and even bearing in mind the age of the audience – Fox hides under his bedsheets as his bed is ‘flown’ to the past. He doesn’t question how long the journey takes as his bed is then carried into town to the playhouse, so that the haunting can continue with various visions being presented to him.

For some reason, even when he emerges from under the covers Fox doesn’t at all notice that he’s at the Playhouse, and detects no sign of the full audience following proceedings out on the other side of a curtain he’s concealed behind. There is a nod to Dickens with the brief appearance of the Ghost of Christmas Past – under a white sheet – holding a candle, but only one brief ‘vision’ shown. This is reasonably clever in the sense that they have thought about how you might fake such a vision, with Fox being shown a view from behind of himself at school, so the face isn’t revealed and he recognises his old school uniform.
 
Present:
Another fairly brief affair, we learn that Timmy Mouse is gravely ill, although we don’t actually see Timmy, nor any of the Mouse family at all. The Ghost is another white sheet job, although briefly doubted by Fox as it’s wearing glasses, and he claims that ghosts would not need glasses due to the fact that they are dead.

There’s an interesting question raised when he remembers being brought chicken soup by Timmy Mouse when he was ill the previous year. Given that the whole cast of characters are talking, sentient animals of various sorts, does that not also include chickens? And therefore the idea of chicken soup raises something of a moral question…?
 
Yet to Come:
Another sheet here, but a black one as per the usual state of affairs. Fox is shown a mocked-up grave for Brer Bear, and told that he died of pneumonia after being turfed out of his home for Fox’s goldmine. Fox is then also shown a vision of his own grave.
 
While all of this has been going on, Bear has befriended old Brer Gator – who seems almost to be portrayed as some sort of sex offender, living alone, shunned by society, trying to tempt children into his swamp – and having followed the tracks from Fox’s house to the playhouse, tries to charge in to the rescue.
 
Fox gets knocked out, the playhouse gets destroyed and Bear carries Fox, still in his bed, safely away back home.

What’s To-Day:
A surprisingly lengthy section, this, not just the quick tie-up that it normally is in most versions. Fox wakes up a reformed character, and strolls into town giving the compliments of the season to all. However, when he meets Brer Rabbit moping about outside the wrecked playhouse, Rabbit despairs that he’s been too clever for his own good this time, as there can now be no benefit performance for Timmy Mouse.
 
He confesses all to Brer Fox, who instead of being angry is touched and thrilled that everyone in the town would go to such an effort to try and reform him. He showers Rabbit with cash for Timmy, and arranges for everyone to be treated to a slap-up Christmas Dinner at the community hall.
 
Meanwhile, as payment for his help with the ‘ghosts’, Brer Bear has gone to Christmas Dinner at lonely old Gator’s house. A turkey is being prepared, which again raises those same interesting moral questions as the chicken soup! Fox gets the wrong end of the stick about where Bear has gone and thinks his friend has agreed that Gator can have him for dinner, and tries to go and rescue him. However, all’s well that ends well and everyone goes back to the hall, with Gator playing the part of Father Christmas.
 
Just don’t leave him alone with the kiddies…

Oddly, there is a song over the end credits which tells the entire story of everything you’ve just watched all over again in musical form.
 
Review:
This isn’t the worst version of the Carol you’ll ever see, although even keeping in mind its child-focused basis there are still some pretty big flaws. The script is at times clunky and could have done with another edit or two – the overlong ‘bed journey’ into the ‘past’ section being probably the biggest structural problem. But in terms of the dialogue there are also a lot of ugly bits, particularly when characters who already know one another’s names refer to each other as ‘Brer Woodchuck’ and ‘Miss Possum’. The constant ‘Brer’ this, that and the other does get a bit wearing, too.
 
Speaking of Miss Possum, though, there is a nice running gag about her fantasies of ultra-violence against Brer Fox. Although after all that build-up, it only makes it all the more disappointing when, having finally got her chance near the end, she only gives him a single whack on the head wither her umbrella.

Miss Possum - the star of the show!

Perhaps surprisingly for a version like this, having acknowledged the ‘existence’ of Dickens in this world, they do take a few opportunities to include his actual words, with characters reading some of their ‘lines’ from a copy of the book when carrying out the fake haunting. Although this is rather undermined by Fox pointing out on these occasions how ‘funny’ the ghosts talk.
 
The animation is generally of a fairly decent standard, although I was conscious of quite a lot of silhouette work, which presumably helps save money and time. And there was also one very sloppy moment when Bear is having tea with Gator, where after Gator has poured it the drops of tea from the spout of the teapot hang frozen in the air for a few moments.

In a nutshell:
Not especially worth seeking out, but judged purely in terms of animal-starring animated versions, it’s leagues ahead of crap like the 2006 CGI version.
 
Links:
IMDb