As the title implies, The Night Before Christmas in Wonderland (now streaming on Amazon Prime Video) squooshes together two well-trod stories into one new, fresh ultra-saga. Sourcing the source material gets a bit convoluted as the classic Santa Claus myth and Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland were mashed up by author Carys Bexington and illustrator Kate Hindley, whose children’s book became the inspiration for this movie. First-time feature director Peter Baynton uses Hindley’s drawings as its visual template – but then he stretches a 40-page picture book into an 80-minute musical starring Gerard Butler as the voice of a rapping Santa. Rest assured, though, the movie is better than that description applies.
The Gist: The movie gets the rapping out of the way early, so consider it a hill to climb before we get to the nice view. There’s a running joke throughout the movie in which a few of Santa’s (Butler) elves park in the periphery of the frame and narrative, playing the musical score. Early on, he has them drop the brass horns for a traditional rock-band ensemble, over which he raps a ditty about prepping for the Big Night – which means the first musical number is technically more like Limp Bizkit than, I dunno, Wu-Tang or Mariah Carey. His elves are busy wrapping gifts, and the reindeer out in the barn are about to stop playing their reindeer games and get to hauling the sleigh around. Notably, there is no Rudolph among this flying herd, but there is a Robin, who doesn’t have a glowing nose, but does have a drippy one, as he’s got some sinus thing going on. I think that’s a joke, considering how red a nose can get when one’s constantly honking into a tissue. It also prompted me to wonder if Rudolph isn’t Rudolph here for fear of the production being copyright-lawsuit’d within an inch of its life by Acme Amalgamated Xmas Inc. (Or maybe David Zaslav simply murdered him for tax reasons.)
I digress. Elsewhere: A little red-haired girl is isolated in a big castle far, far away. She’s the Princess of Hearts (Eliza Riley), and she really wants a bandersnatch for Christmas – but who’s going to feed and walk and scoop the lumps outta the bandersnatch’s litter box, I ask you Princess, who? She writes a letter to Santa and mails it and he gets it and decides he absolutely mustn’t overlook this dear little girl. Now, what’s her address? Wonderland? Might be a bit out of the way but it can be fit into the schedule with some lubricant and a crowbar to get the sleigh through the rabbit hole. Prancer (Mae Muller) is the pragmatic reindeer, and, it seems, the squad’s unofficial spokesperson. And as a pragmatic reindeer should be, she ain’t so sure about this trip to an out-of-the-way locale full of psychedelic mushrooms and lord knows what else.
We work through some more singing as Santa and crew get to the castle, and we cut away to meet some of the denizens of this wabberjocky land: The Mad Hatter (Mawaan Rizwan) oversees the endless tea party, Alice (Simone Ashley) runs around nibbling mushrooms and growing very large, and the Queen of Hearts (Emilia Clarke) stomps around threatening to decapitate anyone who crosses her. Real sweetheart, that lady. All about the justice and the due process and all that. She’s the biggest obstacle Santa faces in an attempt to deliver this gift, and it turns out that the Queen LOATHES the bejeezus out of Christmas and Santa. No surprise there, considering how obsessed with decapitations she is. Decapitations decapitations decapitations, always with the decapitations. And of course, decapitations and Christmas don’t go together well. They don’t go well with birthdays or cheeseburgers, either. Come to think of it, decapitations don’t go well with anything, do they?
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Well, not the guillotine scene from Macbeth, thank Jebus. No, think something middling like Arthur Christmas but more visually charming, or Klaus but less charming, or just go with Alice in Wonderland and The Polar Express or whatever like a big dumb obvious person making big dumb obvious references.
Performance Worth Watching Hearing: Butler actually pulls off the rapping with minimal annoyance, so give this accolade to him.
Memorable Dialogue: The Queen of Hearts speaks the minds of cynics in the audience when, at the beginning of the third act, she gripes, “Oh no – don’t tell me it’s another song.”
Sex and Skin: None.
Our Take: The Night Before Christmas in Wonderland suffers from adaptationitis: 40 pages of children’s picture book turned into a feature-length movie is too much stretching of too little story. Christmas specials are a hallowed tradition, so why not make this a nice, taut 25 instead of a thin 80? So a decent amount of padding must be deployed to fill the time, which means there’s plenty of diddlefarting around between plot points, diddlefarting that includes a bevy of musical sequences and a few clever bits, all of which are agreeable at the same time they feel unnecessary.
But there’s plenty to like about the film: The dialogue composed of rhyming couplets. The lovely 2-D animation, which brings the book’s detailed line drawings to life. The rampant silliness, the amusing reindeer, the crisp character design. Goodwill abounds, even during some of the draggy parts. The story arcs toward solving the Queen of Heart’s obsession with head-offing, too, so perhaps she shall be redeemed to all but the people she’s already decapitated over the years. I bet there’s many. But good hearts desire to see absolution in any context, right? Indeed. Oh, and we don’t see a single decapitation during this movie. Rest assured. Decapitation and diddlefarting don’t go together very well either.
Our Call: The Night Before Christmas in Wonderland is a diverting charmer of a family Christmas movie. It has its moments but it’s not likely to be a classic. STREAM IT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
