From the start, you know the Tiny Toons Adventures Christmas special is as harmless as it is cute. They even reedited the opening to be Christmas-y!
As with a lot of Christmas specials, this parodies It’s A Wonderful Life. Maybe “parody” is too generous - it is It’s A Wonderful Life. There aren’t a lot of jokes on the classic movie, it’s just a vehicle to move along a story about Buster Bunny considering quitting his Christmas special.
Some of the not-too-inside jokes are cute. For example, Buster Bunny’s guardian angel sounds like Jimmy Stewart and Hollywood executives demand pop-culture cameos. Of course, half of these jokes rely on cultural references from the early ‘90s. You get them, but like any Lewinsky or pogs gags now, they feel altogether cliché and stale.
On the other hand, the sheer joy with which the jokes are delivered makes most of its flaws forgivable. They’re genuinely trying and, in Christmas specials, you can get an A for effort.
Speaking of “effort,” let’s see how fast Warner Bros. demands we take down these legally ambiguous YouTube uploads which aren’t by us, so please don’t sue us.
Mike Drucker is a lovely man with many positive characteristics. He has written for Saturday Night Live, The Onion, McSweeney’s, and Nintendo. He’s also a stand-up or something, I guess.
