The Snowman and The Snowdog
The Snowman and The Snowdog
G | 01 January 2014 (USA)
The Snowman and The Snowdog Trailers

Charming animated sequel to Raymond Briggs's classic The Snowman. When a young boy and his mother move house, he builds a Snowman and a Snowdog who magically come to life.

Reviews
Interesteg What makes it different from others?
ReaderKenka Let's be realistic.
Ketrivie It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.
Rio Hayward All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.
Horst in Translation (filmreviews@web.de) 30 years after the Oscar-nominated "The Snowman", it was finally time for a sequel. Now given how popular and beloved the original was, this was quite a risky endeavor. However, in my opinion they did everything right here. Let me start by saying that I like "The Snowman", but it's not among my favorite Christmas movies or anything. They made a good job with the animation here. The style resembles "The Snowman" obviously, but they also brought in new elements and made it more fitting for today's generation, mostly by making this a much more colorful watch. The music is another great aspect. Just like with the original, they used a nice song for the flying scene, but also in other moments you will like what you hear.Hilary Audus was the director of this 25-minute Christmas short film 3 years ago and she also already worked as an animator on the 1982 film. It's a bit sad that John Coates died shortly before this film here got released. Oh well, maybe they showed him a copy beforehand. Who knows. Anyway, it is one year later and the protagonist, the little boy from the old film, is sad because his snowman friend is not with him. So he builds him and he also builds a snowdog for him and of course the two come to life the next morning. Nice idea with the socks on the dog's ears. That certainly made it more memorable. The Snowman takes his 2 new pals on a journey during which they meet a whole village of snowmen and even, briefly, Santa Claus.This is such a harmonic movie with wonderful animation style and it goes very well with the music. Not even the competitive penguin tries something fishy during the skiing contest in order to win. The ending is very well done too. It is happy with the dog and sad with the Snowman and, even if it was slightly predictable, I think this was absolutely the right way to go in terms of emotion. I don't care about grumpy people who complain about this lacking the charm of the original. I think this is a wonderful little movie, excellent watch during the holidays and in my opinion all the more modern aspects added to it make it an even better work than the 1982 original. Highly recommended and it is also a good watch for non-English speakers as there is no text or dialogue in here.
zidangus Well I really did like this animation, but I just cannot bring myself to watch it again. The main reason for this is that my memories of my dog who recently died, come flooding back when I watched it. Which in turn made me an emotional wreck for the following hour. I am going to take this as a good thing for the creators to make such an impact from their animation. But again I am sure I don't want to go through this again. So great animation but if you lost a dog recently, it will bring the memories flooding back and make you somewhat sad and depressed for a while. I guess if you don't have a dog or have not lost a dog then the impact of the animation might be a lot less. But for me one view is enough.
zeio-4 I watched this with bated breath. I couldn't wait to hear the classic musical score again. I couldn't wait to be transferred back in time like the guy eating Ratatouille in the movie Ratatouille. And then it started. The total ruination. The total hijacking of a masterpiece and a substitution with modern drivel, tripe. Idiocracy at work. It saddens me that we want our nostalgia for simpler times to be edited away. That we should make new memories of us being crammed into cities and lose our awe for the northern lights and instead want to see a giant Ferris wheel that costs 25 quid in the long line. The father has been subtracted out to show a modern shattered family? Not sure. And now we have a death of a pet in a children's tale? And the house went from halcyonic, simple-life, low impact countryside to crammed into a foul city where humans are grown and stored under oppressive oligarchical collectivists, pan national corporations and vile banks?I pine for the days when our nostalgia was for a purer, simpler time, not this modern rubbish drivel.I am aghast at the denigration and devolution that has been going on in such a short time.
JoshuaAskew The Snowman was a Christmas classic for Channel 4 - a station that by and large doesn't really seem to get into the holiday spirit. The Snowman and The Snowdog is basically that same classic with a handful of "bonuses".The writer seemed to have gotten drunk on Christmas with a boxset of Marley & Me, I am Legend and Old Yeller, clocking that people will fall over themselves to get overemotional about their pet dogs. It's the Call of Duty method of improving for a sequel. "Let's just stick with the original and add in some cool new features. How about dogs? People love dogs. We'll throw in a plane too."The Snowman's brilliance means this sequel is watchable, but it's completely unnecessary and its emptiness reeks of the shallow commercialism that encapsulates the worst of Christmas.