Toy Story cast heads to seasonal-staple status and beyond

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This article was published 29/11/2014 (4053 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

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It’s one thing for a TV show to be worth seeing. And it’s quite another for one to be worth seeing again and again and again and again.

And in order to have any chance of being called a Christmas classic, the first thing a new seasonal offering must do is earn a place in the latter category. Becoming must-see festive TV means gaining a special place in the hearts of viewers and, maybe someday, being a fixture in the annual Christmas-TV calendar (see this section’s front page) that inevitably includes such titles as A Charlie Brown Christmas, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, A Christmas Story and It’s a Wonderful Life.

It isn’t easy. Few newcomers make the Christmas-classic cut, but those that do will have a “forever” place among the season’s family-viewing favourites.

Two new animated specials make their pitch for seasonal-staple status this week — ABC’s Toy Story That Time Forgot and NBC’s How Murray Saved Christmas. Each is definitely worth a first festive glance, but whether either stands a ghost of a Christmas-yet-to-come chance of becoming a classic depends on how viewers feel after seeing them the first time.

Toy Story That Time Forgot, which airs Tuesday at 7 p.m. on ABC and Citytv, has the advantage of being spun from a hugely successful feature-film franchise. Like the charming 2007 arrival Shrek the Halls, this half-hour special arrives in prime time with familiar characters, a solid storyline foundation and a built-in audience that will pretty much guarantee ratings success and a spot in next year’s December schedule.

Beyond that, however, there’s also the fact that Toy Story That Time Forgot is a delightful half-hour of festive fun. The story opens shortly after Christmas, with highly imaginative little Bonnie heading off to a play date with her favourite toys — Woody and Buzz (voiced by Tom Hanks and Tim Allen), dino pals Rex and Trixie (Wallace Shawn and Kristen Schaal) and an Angel-Kitty tree ornament (Emma Hudak) stuffed into a backpack.

When she arrives, she finds her friend Mason mesmerized by a new video-game system, so she dumps her pack in the middle of his newly unwrapped and now completely ignored toys. As soon as they extricate themselves from the spaceship-shaped satchel, Buzz, Woody and company find themselves surrounded by a cluster of war-mongering Battlesaurs who, having never been played with by their little-kid owner, are unaware that they’re toys.

Perilous plastic-plaything posturing ensues, and it’s up to usually timid Trixie to summon up the dino-courage to save the day. The story is as exciting as it is charming, fully living up to its Toy Story pedigree and definitely earning a regular place in ABC’s future festive plans.

Also arriving this week is How Murray Saved Christmas (Friday at 7 p.m., NBC and Citytv), a holiday offering with a more traditional cartoon look, but a modern pop-culture sensibility.

The story, based on a children’s book by writer/producer Mike Reiss (The Simpsons), takes place in a strange village called Stinky Cigars, which exists “north of the North Pole and south of the stars,” according to rhyme-reading narrator Dennis Haysbert. Unknown to the rest of the world, it’s the place where iconic figures associated with annual holidays — the Groundhog, the Easter Bunny, Columbus, Cupid, the April Fool, the Chinese New-Year dragon and, of course, Santa Claus — reside.

It’s just before Christmas, and preparations for Santa’s big trip are going well — until, that is, an entrepreneurial elf named Edison asks him to inspect a new toy he’s invented. It’s a Jack-in-the-Boxer — outfitted with a boxing glove instead of a spring-loaded clown — so when Santa turns the musical crank, he ends up getting knocked so senseless he can’t continue with Christmas.

Searching madly for a fill-in, Edison is forced to ask a local deli owner named Murray Weiner if he can deliver the toys. As it turns out, this sandwich-slinging grump might have the necessary skills to get the job done, but it’ll take some convincing to get him to give it a try.

How Murray Saved Christmas has many of the elements associated with animated classics — colourful characters, catchy tunes, lots of kid-friendly sight gags — but it also tries hard to deliver more adult-oriented jokes and pop-culture commentary. The result is a few moments — such as a scene in which Santa is portrayed as a virtual slave-driver who berates his unpaid elves for not working fast enough — that might prove to be off-putting for younger viewers.

The voice cast is stellar — led by Jerry Stiller, Sean Hayes, John Ratzenberger and Kevin Michael Richardson — and the ending is suitably happy, so How Murray Saved Christmas is bound to leave many viewers feeling festively amused. But will they want to watch it again, and again?

That’s an excellent next-Christmas question.

brad.oswald@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @BradOswald