Warner Bros. Animation presents: Miser Brothers on ABC Family Dec. 13 at 8pm!

I really wish that I could go back in time and un-see this special. The concept wasn't bad, but by the time Mrs. Clause launched into her song about LOVE and CARING and FRIENDSHIP, I wanted to stab my brain with a dinner fork.

Also, Snow Miser's voice bugged me from the very beginning. Snow Miser in The Year Without a Santa Clause was very suave. This guy sounded like all he needed was a top hat, a handlebar mustache, and a few scenes of hand-wringing to become a Looney Toons era villain.

All in all, it was worse than I expected it to be. But that's probably because I made the mistake of going into it with a glimmer of hope in the first place.

Luckily I still have TYWOaSC on the DVR. I can try and erase this horror from my memory with a few re-watchings of the classic.
 
Pretty bad, North wind was a pretty lame antaginist, the songs were weak and it just was not good.

It was a good attempt but they should have gone for a totaly new special then try to revive an old one.
 
I enjoyed the special, but I think the weakest thing were the new character designs. They should have stuck more closely to the original's, cause Snow Miser, Santa Claus and Mrs. Claus especially looked off compared to the original special. I would have also liked it if they had used similar elves from both the original special and other Rankin Bass specials instead of making just a bunch of generic children elves. Maybe there was a legal issue with that, who knows? The songs were also kinda eh and the North Wind just seemed weak and too much of a Jay Leno parody. The good points, however, was that the plot itself was decent, I liked the chemistry shown between the Miser Brothers, Mickey Rooney and Irving returning was a bonus, and they actually made it in stop motion animation instead of CGI. I too was not too fond of Snow Miser's new voice, and it especially didn't work well when Heat Miser retained his original voice. Was it that hard to get someone who sounded closer to his original voice?
 
Yeah, so that... wasn't that great. It's commendable that they got Rooney and Irving back to play Santa and Heat Miser and did the whole thing in true stop motion and not CGI, but other than that, pretty bland. Lame antagonist, horrible voice for Snow Miser, a lot of the new character models really didn't sit right with me, bad songs (the one about how brothers should love and care for each other was awful). I stand by what I said before: "A Year Without A Santa Claus" didn't need a follow up.

And, honestly, I know Dick Shawn is gone, but couldn't they have found someone who at least sounded close to the original voice of Snow Miser?
 
Well, I didn't hate it, but I admit that wasn't great.

Yes, the North Wind was indeed a lame villain, and idly, I have to wonder if the story needed a big bad villain at all; just getting Snow Miser and Heat Miser to finally bury the hatchet and get along could've been plot enough to carry a story.

It didn't change my life, but it won't taint my memories of the original either. Ultimately, it served its' purpose: to bring the Miser Brothers back on TV. I can see it become a basic cable holiday staple and not harming anything.
 
You know, this is the kind of thing makes me wary when people say that they want a sequel to The Incredibles. I mean, the Miser Brothers are great characters and all, but this follow-up special smacked mostly of effort. Mind you, it was made 30 years after A Year Without a Santa Claus, so I wasn't expecting anything phenomenal. ABC Family will probably rerun this one for the next few years in the hopes of it becoming a classic. I'd rather have no sequel than a weak one.
 
To be fair, everything that comes out today that's based on something old and popular smacks of effort. Nowadays even things based on shows and movies that are fairly recent tend to also smack of effort.

I haven't seen this Miser Brothers special, but it doesn't sound like something that's even close to being worth my time.
 
I thought that it was a cute special. Not as good as The Year Without a Santa Claus, but I wasn't expecting it to be that good either. The new designs were kind of weird at first, but I eventually got use to them. I do give them special credit for getting Mickey Rooney to play Santa Claus again and Irving to play Heat Miser again. I wasn't expecting that either, so that was a cute surprise. The only things I didn't like were North Wind since he was a pretty lame villain and Snow Miser's voice just threw me off. I did kind of get used to it, not as much as the designs, but it was still kind of too gruff on me. It also didn't sound nearly as funny as his original voice.

Other than that, I thought that it was a really nice special. I also did think that the reindeer they had, especially the baby ones, were super cute so that kind of worked in their favor. Like I said, it isn't anyway near as good as The Year Without a Santa Claus, but I can definitely see myself watching it again.
 
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