My Review of "Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer (1964)"

I remember watching Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer back when I was a kid in the 1980s. I was in awe of the stop motion animation that they did for the movie. I loved the story. It also always played every Christmas season so I wasn't sure if this was a Stockholm Syndrome kind of thing where I loved it because it just played all the time and I didn't have much choice in the matter.

Fast forward to 2019 and I haven't seen the movie for quite a while. My girlfriend asked if I'd like to watch it and I said yes because it's been so long since I had seen it last. I was curious how it would stack up after seeing crazy stop motion animated movies like Kubo and the Two Strings. Also it's a really old movie how will it play out today?

The minute it started up a rush of nostalgia hit me. I felt like I was a kid again watching it for the first time. I know it was all familiar but it was fun seeing these memorable characters once again. Today it's a little different because the film which was made for TV back in 1964 has been updated in full high definition. It's kind of crazy to see all of the details of the characters. You see all of the textures of each of the models and it's both glorious and a little distracting.

The songs are all classics that I remember back in the day and the themes are still relevant to today. Surprisingly there weren't too many things that I would say wouldn't be politically correct enough to play out in 2019. I thought it was a totally acceptable family movie for today's generation. All the magic that I remembered back in the 1980's still shines today. It just goes to show you that a good film is timeless.

That's not to say there weren't things that didn't age well. I did mention that the film was upgraded to high definition visuals and because of this it kind of makes camera work a little on the distracting side. There are certain scenes that included some shaky camera work and add that to the jittery stop motion animation and you can have a bit of a stomach churning situation. Well that can depend on the screen that you're watching. If you have a large television which I believe everyone today now owns. It can create a little bit of nausea. These scenes aren't all over the place but there are a few of them that you can feel a little sick watching it.

I'm not certain how the newer generation of kids will like this film. There's a large population of us that will always regard this film as a classic because we grew up watching it but with cable subscriptions dying out I would say there's less and less people growing up with this film. The only way they'll grow up with it is if someone forces them to watch it and that may very well happen because that's what we do. A lot of force feed certain things to the next generation ignorantly.

Overall, I still had a large sense of nostalgia when I watched this movie. It's still a classic if you ask me. I really enjoyed it but I have to admit that I did experience some nausea watching this movie because of the jittery animation and the shaky camera work. Regardless, it was still a fun time that I think can withstand the test of time (for various reasons). I will have to give Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer a 7.5 out of 10. Go out and enjoy it everyone!