Tag Archives: dumb and dumber

December 6, 2025

Dec. 6 – The Nostalgia Spot Christmas Special Countdown #168-158

By Joe

We’re back to the ranking posts, and following yesterday’s solo entry, it means our numbers are no longer nice and clean. This is also our first day with 11 entries and we’ll have a few more just as part of my organization. We’ll also never have fewer than 10 on these. It’s math, baby!

Today we slide a bit further into the “Hmm…okay,” category. There’s still stuff here that I am unlikely to ever return to, but there’s also some stuff in here that I watch just about every year. Now, I hesitate to call those particular specials good, but they obviously do something right or appeal to a certain part of me and flawed Christmas specials can be watchable. The first one on our list though is a bit murky.

168 – A Very Woody Christmas

Courtesy of the “new” Woody Woodpecker show comes “A Very Woody Christmas.” I could make this short and say this series had another Christmas episode, but I never watched it. I had my fill here. It’s not terrible, it just didn’t really make me laugh. It’s three segments: two Woody cartoons sandwiched around a Chilly Willy. I’d say the Chilly Willy one is the best of the three, but I always liked the little penguin. The third one is also in the discussion as Woody tries to get himself off the Naughty List by doing something nice for his neighbor, but everything just goes wrong. The show premiered in 1999 and it looks okay by those standards. Woody’s redesign is slight and not unsightly and I did like Billy West in the role, I just wish the cartoon was funnier.

167 – Bugs Bunny’s Looney Christmas Tales

You could take a lot of what I just said about Woody and apply it here. One would think a Christmas special centered around Bugs Bunny would be pretty funny, but this is not. Perhaps one of the most disappointing Christmas specials I’ve ever seen, this comes post Looney Tunes shorts when the made-for-television animation was obvious and the voices started sounding a little different. It doesn’t look particularly good and too much time is wasted on a tired A Christmas Carol parody that does nothing clever. My affection for these characters has helped to prop it up all the way to this spot and the fact that my kids love Bugs Bunny has kept this in semi-rotation over the years, but this is the worst Looney Tunes Christmas anything on this list.

166 – The Mask – Santa Mask

We go from the Looney Tunes Christmas special to the superhero who wants to be a Looney Tune. The Mask is not a show I’ve spent much time with outside of this episode and I’m not likely to. Even so, this wasn’t bad even though it’s another “Character takes over for Santa” plot. Rob Paulsen is a good Mask and there were at least a few spots that made me smile. It also has Tim Curry and he’s great. I did enjoy the look of this one as it’s much better than the other Jim Carrey movies turned cartoons in that respect. And with this one, I can watch it and think, “This isn’t bad, but it’s definitely not made for me.” And that’s because it’s made for kids and if I were a kid I’d probably think higher of this. And had I been a little kid when this was on, maybe my nostalgia for it would have pushed it higher? Or not as we’ll see in a few entries.

165 – Back to the Future – Dickens of a Christmas

I avoided this one for years because of that title. “Dickens” implies only one thing when paired with Christmas and my appetite to watch unfamiliar A Christmas Carol takes is nonexistent. This one isn’t really what I thought the title implied. Instead, the Brown family (and Marty) travel back in time to find that A Christmas Carol is essentially a true story. They don’t really come to that conclusion, but that’s basically what it is. The Brown kids get mixed up with an Oliver Twist like kid and a Scrooge-type gets it in the end. It’s all right. A cromulent Christmas episode from a cromulent cartoon. There’s so little Back to the Future things outside the movies that there was a temptation to rank this one higher, but if I’m being honest with myself I’ll never watch it again.

164 – The Berenstain Bears’ Christmas Tree

Speaking of surprises, this one definitely surprised me. I knew the Berenstain Bears as a series of children’s books. I read and enjoyed them as a kid. I also vaguely recall an animated series. The only specific of the animated version I could recall was the opening title. An actual plot from an episode is just not something my brain can recall. I assumed this would be a preschool styled show and when I went to watch it for the countdown that year I thought there was a really strong chance I was wasting my time as I avoid preschool shows for this blog. There just isn’t much to talk about with them. I was wrong as this was really a straight-forward comedic show aimed at kids. It didn’t exactly win me over, but I was charmed by elements of it and came to enjoy the dumb father character. I think if this were in the 11 minute range it would have been stronger as I just got sick of it. The plot didn’t have enough meat on the bone to sustain the full run time, but it wasn’t bad. If my kids had been raised on this franchise then I would have been fine introducing this to them. Since they weren’t, I don’t have to.

163 – Dumb and Dumber – Santa Klutz

The last of the Jim Carrey movies turned cartoons I covered was Dumb and Dumber. Coincidentally, it was also the last to be released and the same is true of the movie and cartoon. And it’s also the best of the three, which I’d say is also true of the movies which is quite the coincidence. As for series, that I can’t attest to as I haven’t seen enough of any of them, but for Christmas specials I’m taking “Santa Klutz” over the other two. Part of the reason for that is the run time – this one is short. I like short. It is ugly as sin and I don’t really like looking at it, but unlike the other two this one did have some genuine funny moments. It can be hard to write stupid characters, but this cartoon did a good job with that. There’s some misdirection to jokes and the plot setup is also a strength. Reflecting on it, I’m almost talking myself out of ranking it here and moving it up, but I’m not here to second guess myself.

162 – A Cosmic Christmas

A Cosmic Christmas is a special that’s more interesting than good. I say that as someone who didn’t grow up watching it so my nostalgia here is nil, but the main plot beats are pretty standard Christmas stuff. The animation is rough, but in an artistic and interesting way. Some characters have weird flow or large blocks of color. There’s lots of smoking which is unusual in this day and age and some odd effects with the aliens and their spacecraft. I was never bored watching it even if the story wasn’t exciting. I also enjoyed the Christmas message contained in this one which is largely to help the less fortunate – the sort of thing a lot of high profile church people lose sight of. RIP Nelvana.

161 – X-Men – Have Yourself a Morlock Little X-Mas

Here’s the one I was mostly calling out in the intro paragraph as one I tend to watch every year. X-Men was my favorite show as a kid so nostalgia plays a big role. I was predisposed to liking any Christmas episode X-Men did. And this is a pretty bad Christmas episode, but it’s also intentionally bad. The writing staff was tasked with doing a Christmas episode so they tried to get every trope they could come up with into this one because, on the surface, Christmas with the X-Men is pretty absurd. It just wasn’t the type of show that was going to tackle the subject. The only problem here is the writers were almost too good at making a bad Christmas episode. There’s no sense of irony within the episode, you’re only in on the joke if you happened to read an interview concerning it.

160 – Teddy Ruxpin’s Winter Adventure

I don’t have a ton of nostalgia for the Teddy Ruxpin cartoon, but I did love my Teddy Ruxpin doll and the book this episode was based on. I feel like I can almost recite that story from memory because Teddy and Grubby told it to me so much. It’s not a true Christmas special as it’s one of those other world stories where they have their own customs that just so happen to resemble Christmas an awful lot. The only thing missing is Santa Claus. Teddy and his pals deliver gifts to their friends while the villain, Tweeg, tries to ruin their time, but he’s an idiot with idiot followers. It’s a little too syrupy sweet at times, but I was entertained.

159 – Mickey’s Twice Upon a Christmas

Mickey’s Once Upon a Christmas was so good that they had to come back for another one. Too bad that along the way someone decided that this should be animated in 3D as opposed to 2D and the classic Disney characters just weren’t ready for that. This thing is Ugly. Mickey looks weird, Goofy more so, and it’s an all together downgrade across the board. The duck nephews who are tasked with carrying one of the longer segments of this one look almost monstrous. It’s also a weird setup where we’re going with what is essentially a 90 minute block of programming broken up into 5 segments of varying lengths. It does improve the pacing when compared with Mickey’s Once Upon a Christmas, but the stories aren’t the best. The saving grace is the final segment where Pluto accidentally winds up at the North Pole and Mickey thinks he ran away because he got mad at him. It’s cute watching Pluto frolic with the other reindeer and it has a really sweet ending. It also helps that Pluto made the jump to 3D better than most of the cast. If you’re interested in this one, I recommend just fast forwarding to that part. The rest is filler.

158 – One Ham’s Family

Tex Avery’s contribution to Christmas is this short that’s also a sequel to the classic story The Three Little Pigs. Well, sort of. It doesn’t really matter, but we have two married pigs and their bratty son and old Mr. Big Bad is going to try and sneak into this home on Christmas. It turns out to be a bad idea as the little kid is a true screwball cartoon character with all the powers of the screwball. We get to watch this kid brutalize the wolf and get some laughs in the process. It’s light on your usual Christmas tropes, but there’s something there. What holds it back is just that, at this point in Avery’s career, there wasn’t a whole lot more he could do. It’s a lot of the same gags you’ve seen before and the attempts at making them bigger just lack imagination. I also don’t like the protagonist. I dislike his voice and most of his mannerisms so it ends up being one of those cartoons where you almost want to root for the bad guy. Eat the damn kid – he sucks!

Can’t wait until tomorrow for more Christmas? Check out what we had to say on this day last year and beyond:

Dec. 6 – The Cuphead Show! – “Holiday Tree-dition”

What’s next for a video game that looks like a cartoon? Why, a cartoon! Novel concept, huh? Cuphead is a 2017 video game created by Jared and Chad Moldenhauer heavily inspired by animation from the 1930s. It’s basically a hand drawn video game and a fully playable one, at that. It made waves when it…

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by Joe

Dec. 6 – Silly Symphony – “Santa’s Workshop” (1932)

Back in 1929 Walt Disney launched the Silly Symphonies series of cartoon shorts. Unlike the Mickey Mouse shorts that were growing popular at the time, Silly Symphonies did not center on just one character or even a group of characters, but rather were fairly self-contained. Some shorts that became popular, like The Three Little Pigs,…

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by Joe

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December 18, 2020

Dec. 18 – Dumb and Dumber – “Santa Klutz”

By Joe
Original air date December 16, 1995

After doing write-ups for the two cartoons inspired by Jim Carrey films from 1994, you must have figured I’d do the third today! Just as Carrey stormed the cinematic gates with Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, The Mask, and Dumb and Dumber in ’94, the television world followed suit in ’95 with an animated series based on each of those three films. While the first two were made for CBS to air on Saturday morning, Dumb and Dumber went a different route. Still proving that anything relating to Carrey was worth investing in, Dumb and Dumber found itself on another broadcast network, in this case ABC. Thematically and visually, it didn’t really fit-in with the whole One Saturday Morning vibe the network was rolling with, so it’s probably no surprise to find out it wound up on Cartoon Network.

And that’s where the show probably belonged as this is a Hanna-Barbera produced toon. In the mid-90s, ABC was under the Disney banner so it was odd to have a non-Disney developed cartoon on ABC, where as Cartoon Network was owned by Turner which owned Hanna-Barbera. This ended up being the final Hanna-Barbera cartoon produced to air on a broadcast network for a Saturday morning block, an interesting little factoid since Hanna-Barbera was once the king of Saturday morning cartoons.

Because this series went a different direction, it has no affiliation with the other two cartoons we looked at so if you were hoping Harry and Lloyd would meet Ace, I regret to inform you it never happened. Dumb and Dumber probably wouldn’t have survived long enough to pull off that trick any way, since only 13 episodes were produced. Once ABC had seen enough, Cartoon Network was willing to take the re-runs, but not commission more episodes, so it’s safe to say this one was a flop.

The cartoon basically picks-up where the movie left off. Harry (Bill Fagerbakke) and Lloyd (Matt Frewer) are back home after their adventures in Aspen along with their dog-shaped van. Joining them is a new pet, a beaver they think is a cat, and each episode is split into two segments where Harry and Lloyd wind-up in some odd misadventure owing to the fact that they’re a pair of men with very limited intelligence and observational skills. As a mid-90s Hanna-Barbera production, it has a familiar art style to those who were watching the various cartoons premiering under the What a Cartoon banner. The character designs here remind me a lot of Dexter’s Laboratory, only with a touch more ugliness. Even though Harry and Lloyd had pretty similar builds in the film, for the cartoon it was decided to make Lloyd tall and lanky and Harry short and stocky. They’re both rather ugly, with Harry a walking mess and Lloyd a collection of sharp angles and teeth. While one can certainly argue this wasn’t a show that should look like The Mask or Recess, it’s still understandable to not be particularly taken with the visuals here.

The eighth episode of the series is the one to feature a Christmas plot. The first segment is dedicated to the holiday via “Santa Klutz.” The episode begins with Harry and Lloyd out and about with Kitty in their van. They’re both confused to see Kitty cutting down a Christmas tree and slapping it on top of their van, even though they refer to it as a “Christmas tree” and not as an evergreen or pine tree. Harry panics and wonders if Christmas is in December again, and quickly confirms that they’re only three days away from Christmas! Both men need to get a present for the other, but both are also faced with the problem of not having any money to get that present. Neither wants to admit this fact to the other, so Lloyd casually suggests they head to The Big City and look for a part-time job just because.

Lloyd likes to dream big.

The two arrive at Big Department Store and head in seeking employment. Along the way, Lloyd fantasizes about buying Harry a space shuttle for Christmas, proving he has no idea how much a part-time job around the holidays pays, or that he has no concept of how much a space shuttle would cost, or maybe both? Lloyd ends up with a 2 dollar-an-hour job handing out perfume samples, while Harry stumbles upon the store’s Santa who is fed up with the job. He hands over his costume to Harry and he immediately gets sent into the fray.

I hope he gets paid per kid.

Harry is seated in front of an impossibly long line of customers barely looking the part. The costume comes without a beard, it would seem, and Harry has trouble remembering the line “Ho Ho Ho.” His first child turns out to be homicidal, while the second is a degenerate gambler. Meanwhile, Lloyd finds out women don’t like being sprayed with perfume at random. The men don’t either, and when Lloyd angers a large male customer the two grapple over a perfume bottle until the top pops off. It is apparently now a grenade, and as it bounces away Lloyd does the noble thing of falling on top of it. Though since it’s perfume, it explodes rather tamely leaving Lloyd with a pleasant taste in his mouth.

Pictured: not a nice old lady.

As kids cry on Harry’s lap or sneeze on him, Lloyd attempts to sell some perfume to an old woman (Ed Asner per the credits, though it sounds nothing like him). She immediately takes offense to anything he says, even though it’s all innocent. When she informs the manager (Harvey Korman) that Lloyd accused her of smelling of cheap perfume, he asks if she’d like the man fired and she does. Lloyd them imagines a Christmas in which his space shuttle gift is repossessed by an army general (Ed Asner) leaving him despondent.

Lloyd’s Didi cosplay is on point.

Lloyd takes a walk over to the Santa area and spies Harry seated on the throne. Upon seeing his friend dressed as Santa, he comes to the totally reasonable conclusion that Harry IS Santa! And he has been this whole time! He then tries to go have a chat, but finds out from security that Santa is reserved for children. After a couple of failed attempts to sneak up, Lloyd dawns a disguise. I already said this show visually reminded me of Dexter’s Laboratory, but seeing Lloyd in his costume really drives that home as he’s basically in the same outfit as Dexter’s sister, Didi.

Upon reaching Harry Claus, Lloyd tells him he wants Santa to bring him a bunch of money so he can buy his best friend Harry a gift. Harry sees through the disguise which leads to a confrontation as Lloyd is angry with Harry for holding out on him. The two get into a fight and the store manager shows up. He reminds Lloyd that he already banned him, and fires Harry for good measure. Despondent outside the store, the two men hang their heads in shame. Only Lloyd hasn’t given-up on Harry as Santa, so Harry does the only reasonable thing he can to convince Lloyd he’s not who he thinks he is – they take a ride to the North Pole.

I think this is where they live.

The two arrive at Santa’s Work Shop on Christmas Eve. The only problem is Santa isn’t there since it’s, duh, Christmas Eve! They have that confirmed to them by an elf (Scott Menville), and Lloyd sees this as proof that he’s right. The two then head back to wherever they’re from to have a little camp out. Harry is hopeful they’ll be able to catch the real deal in action. Sure enough, he does indeed show up, but Lloyd still isn’t convinced. In fact, he had the foresight to assume Harry would try something like this so he called ahead for Officer Doohickey (Harvey Korman) who shows up and arrests Santa on the spot.

How to get on the naughty list.

Santa (Asner) is pretty surprised that anyone would mistake Harry for him, so Lloyd asks him to prove he’s really Santa. He uses some magic to get out of the police cuffs, which magically appear on Doohickey who remarks “This happens more often than you think.” Still not convinced, Santa whips out his portable PC to check his naughty list. He looks up Doohickey and finds him on the naughty list for lying to his wife about his doughnut habit. Doohickey declares he’s the real deal and scrams leaving Santa alone with the morons. He then asks the two what they want for Christmas and both gleefully whisper into one of his ears.

The next day, Kitty is opening his present from his car seat while Lloyd tells Harry he asked Santa for a gift for Harry. Harry confesses he did the same for Lloyd and the two trade identical boxes. Inside are identical gifts: best friend in the world trophies! Kitty also got a log with a plaque that reads “Best Kitty in the World.” Lloyd then declares there can be only one best friend in the world, and it’s Harry, as he tries to hand over his trophy. Harry does the same, and we zoom out on the two arguing over who is the better friend.

Everything worked out in the end, and all it took was a little divine intervention.

“Santa Klutz” is short and sweet. While I think very little of the art style, I can’t say I hate this. Maybe it was the fact that it’s only around 10 minutes, but I think I’d rather watch that again than either of the specials from the past two days. The humor is not as slapstick as I expected as it’s mostly derived from the two not correctly reading a situation or just getting into arguments stemming from the fact that they’re both stupid. Lloyd mistaking Harry as the real Santa is a bit clever as most shows aiming for such an error would have Lloyd tricked by the costume. Instead, he just thinks his best friend has been lying to him this whole time. It goes for a happy ending when I actually expected it to be a bit darker. If this were a true Farrelly brothers production, Santa probably gets victimized in some way instead of just mildly inconvenienced.

Even though I didn’t hate this, it’s not at all surprising to see a show about two grown men of limited intelligence failed as a cartoon. It’s basically 2 Stupid Dogs, but with humans instead, and how is that any more fun? I don’t think anyone walked out of a viewing of Dumb and Dumber wanting an animated series, but that didn’t stop folks from trying! If you want to check this out, it’s mostly been discarded by Hanna-Barbera. You won’t find it on Boomerang and it also isn’t on HBO Max with some of the other Cartoon Network shows. Instead, you can purchase it through Amazon and Apple if you want to stream it. Warner Bros. did make it available in a manufacture-on-demand release back in 2015 on DVD. Because of that format, it’s never really come down in price, though there also isn’t enough demand to cause it to go up. Even so, I doubt very much anyone would stumble upon this and decide they needed to spend 25 bucks on this cartoon, but in the event one person did, at least you have that option.

Can’t wait until tomorrow for more Christmas? Check out what we had to say on this day last year and beyond:

Dec. 18 – Little Dracula – “The Bite Before Christmas”

There was a huge demand for cartoons in the early 90s. Cable was expanding and needed content for all ages while a new broadcast network was also making noise. That network was Fox, and after scoring primetime hits with Married…with Children and The Simpsons, the network started to look at other areas where it could…

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by Joe

Dec. 18 – I Am Weasel – “Happy Baboon Holidays”

For today’s installment, we’re taking a trip back to Cartoon Network of 1997 and the animated short I Am Weasel – “Happy Baboon Holidays.” I Am Weasel originated as a segment as part of the Cow and Chicken show, which was part of the second wave of Cartoon Cartoons to become a full-fledged show. Like…

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by Joe

Dec. 18 – Bob’s Burgers: “Christmas in the Car”

Among the Fox programs airing on Sunday nights, Bob’s Burgers has become the one most likely to deliver a good Christmas special year in and year out, especially now that American Dad has fled to cable. It also still feels like a relatively new series to me, but it’s now in its eighth season. Bob’s…

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by Joe

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