“Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer”

I am of the age to have listened to those Dr. Demento compilation albums over and over again. Now, “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” is not my least favourite of the songs on the Christmas one. That would be “The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don’t Be Late),” by the Chipmunks. But it’s certainly high on the list. I’m not a fan of the standard “I hate the person I’m married to” humour, which is implied here given how the grandpa in the song seems pretty okay with the loss of his wife. It feels as though we’ve mostly moved away from this by letting people just . . . walk away from toxic family, and we’re all the healthier for it.

Sing along if you know the words, I guess. The original song is quite short. It can all be summed up by the title. Reindeer. Grandma is run over by it. The family is wearing all black; Grandpa’s watching football and playing cards with Cousin Mel. It’s implied that there’s something unpleasant about Santa because of the elves. Really, there’s not much else to talk about here.

Then, there’s the cartoon. Y’all, it’s bad. The family in the cartoon owns a store in a town where everything else is run by Austin Bucks (Cameron Clarke). Grandma Spankenheimer (Susan Blu) and protagonist Jake (Alex Doduk) love Christmas, and the rest of the family is neutral except Cousin Mel (Michele Lee), who is scheming to sell the whole thing out to Bucks. Grandma is run over as in the song and then disappears, and then for the next year there’s goings-on as Jake must prove that Santa (Jim Staahl) exists and is responsible while busting Cousin Mel’s nefarious plans. And then he’s got to prove Santa innocent. There’s also comedic amnesia thrown in for giggles.

So there’s a lot to unpack here. The original song is cynical as hell. It’s implied that Grandma’s a lot of work. In the cartoon, Grandma’s medication is something to do with an egg allergy, and that’s why the “drinking too much eggnog” enters into it. The song relies on you contemplating exactly how much booze is in that eggnog. Staggering into the snow, after all. Grandma is killed and Grandpa doesn’t care. The joke there is how he’s “handling it so well.” You know, because he has no feelings for his wife and the mother of his children.

Conversely, the song is doing everything in its power to be wholesome. Grandma’s an utter sweetheart, and everyone but her and Jake has to learn The True Meaning Of Christmas. There’s an inflatable Christmas tree. No one but Jake has any interest in helping to decorate. Grandma makes fruitcake, which not even the narrator likes, but she also likes baking Christmas cookies. Which she’s taking to a community center. Like, how cartoonishly evil are we making any scheme to take her down?

I did smile a little when Santa said that the meaning of Christmas included a small amount of conspicuous consumption, and that’s the most positive reaction I had to any of this. I don’t like fruitcake, but fruitcake jokes were old when this cartoon was new. Cousin Mel has a lawyer named I. M. Slime (Kathleen Barr), and yeah. Ebert’s law of funny names strikes again. The movie isn’t funny when it’s trying to be funny and is just painful when it’s trying to be wholesome. It’s awful.

Is there a reason “Cousin Mel” becomes a scheming woman in the cartoon? Because in the song, Cousin Mel is admittedly not gendered, but my grandfather went by Mel. I suppose it could be short for Melanie or something, but this Cousin Mel is a woman vaguely resembling someone wearing a Halloween store generic Sexy Girl Who Solves Mysteries With Cartoon Dog costume. She wants to marry a rich man, and she figures selling the only store in town not owned by Austin Bucks to him is the way to get that to happen. Her lawyer is also a scheming woman, and Austin Bucks turns out to not be that bad after all, so yeah.

I watched all this on YouTube in pieces except Part 6, which wasn’t on the playlist I found. The kids and I decided that we didn’t care and if anything were glad to have that much less to watch. There was no need for this to exist. It isn’t funny. It doesn’t have anything interesting to say. The animation is dreadful. The voicework is phoned in even by the talented people. It’s a desperate attempt to cash in on something that wasn’t worth cashing in on with a sequel song, which oh by the way exists and is also in the cartoon; it’s about Grandpa suing the pants off of Santa. No prizes for guessing what it’s called.

Next month, we’ll be looking at the book Dark Dame, the rights to which were bought by MGM to make a Jean Harlow vehicle just before Harlow died and eventually became the Ann Sothern series Maisie!