What can I say? I adored He-Man as a child, watching the cartoon as
much as possible not to mention having every action figure, vehicle,
and/or playset I could get my hands on. So considering how huge this
franchise was, this was almost inevitable. Is it good?
Well to be fair, at least they gave it a story and used the characters. It wasn’t like the awful Power Rangers Christmas which featured only Alpha and a bunch of kids singing carols. Give this special credit, it has a plot! But at the same it’s barely a “Christmas” special. It feels more like an extended episode of He-Man guest starring She-Ra. Though that’s kind of a positive, it could have been like “The Star Wars Christmas Special” which doesn’t even feel like it remotely belongs in that universe. But still it doesn’t feel “special” to be a special, heck even IMDB calls it a “special Christmas episode”. At least they did try to make it work in the context of the two series. Yeah it feels more like a big ad for She-Ra, since she has more to do and more of her cast are involved, but that’s Ok.
There’s no point in trying to nitpick this since it’s been reviewed by Nostalgia Critic, Phelous, and many others. The plot is simple, Orko rescues two children on Earth and they end up getting returned to Eternia. The rest of the special are out villains trying to kidnap the children to prevent them from spreading the “Christmas spirit”. Which doesn’t make sense since He-Man is already a source of hope and they do have celebrations on Eternia. If this was a dark and depressing planet this plot would be OK. Here it feels forced. Also in the original show it seemed liked Earth was not very convenient, and yet in this special not only does Orko end up there but Man At Arms is somehow able to view the children after they return. How the hell did he do that exactly??
But that isn’t the only slap in the face to the original show we get. How else can you explain Skeletor growing a heart and deciding he has to protect the kids? I think they forgot Skeletor was sort of an established villain. I guess it would make even less sense for Hordak to think like this, but I don’t know. Sometimes I’ll watch a regular episode of He-Man and be thinking “this is the guy who is going to be a goodie good in the Christmas episode?” Why didn’t they just use Beast Man or one the other underlings? And then have the kids interact with He-Man, you ever notice they never do? I always wondered why they never asked Orko just who the heck this He-Man guy was! Well maybe it’s not a big deal since the kids have Superman in their world (if you read DC Comics anyway). One other thing I always wondered is why they make Prince Adam’s voice so nasal here? Did the actor forget how to do the voice correctly, he never sounded that, well, bad.
The Christmasisest part is probably the opening title, where they mix the theme songs with a version of Jingle Bells. Most of the time Christmas actually comes up the scene quickly fades before to much detail is given. Which is good, we wouldn’t want a Christmas special to go into the meaning of the holiday or anything. Oh, and there is a song in the special. While I give the special credit that it’s low key and not a major spectacle, the song is sooooo bad. The action is standard He-Man/She-Ra, no complaints there.
It’s goofy, it’s silly, it makes no sense really. But I have a special place in my heart for it. If you like corny nostalgia for Christmas, this is it! I think the other thing to remember is that in the 80’s, everyone got their own Christmas Special. For pete’s sake, we had Christmas in Pac-Land! Not to mention Smurfs, Glo Bugs, and The California Raisins (??). Live action wasn’t any better we had everything from Pee-Wee Herman to Alf. God I miss the 80’s.
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