Carface Remembers He Has a Heart in An All Dogs Christmas Carol

I was browsing around Netflix yesterday when I discovered that there was an All Dogs Go to Heaven Christmas movie – and that, even better, it was available to watch online. While I raised an eyebrow over the existence of this second sequel to the animated Don Bluth film about a rough-and-tumble dog with a heart of gold, I loved the original, so I figured it would be worth a shot. As I expected, An All Dogs Christmas Carol is a cute enough, if wholly unnecessary, adaptation of the Charles Dickens classic.

After the second (rather abysmal) All Dogs Go to Heaven movie, there was evidently a television series starring these characters, and I get the sense that this movie is in line with that series. It doesn’t seem to pick right up from where the movie left off; I tried not to remember too much about that shoddy sequel, but there seemed to be some continuity issues that maybe could have been ironed out through the TV series. I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt there. Still, this movie, at a scant hour and fifteen minutes in length, basically screams “quick moneymaker” to me. It’s nothing but a retelling of A Christmas Carol, and considering the fact that the original movie was a fairly powerful story of redemption itself, giving us another redemption story here that is such an obvious rip-off doesn’t feel nearly as compelling. I mean, you could take any number of shows or movies and make the resident grouchiest / meanest character into Scrooge and use side characters as the ghosts who help him or her recover the Christmas spirit. It’s been done over and over again. One of my all-time favorite television episodes, M*A*S*H’s Dear Sis, has an element of A Christmas Carol about it. But it isn’t just a straightforward rehash, which this is.

The villainous canine gangster Carface (Ernest Borgnine) is up to his old tricks. This time, he’s got a magical gizmo that hypnotizes any dog within hearing range, allowing him to make out like a bandit when they march up to him in a daze and give him all their stuff. He and his faithful assistant, Killer (Charles Nelson Reilly), have had it with these little gigs, though. They want to pull off something truly impressive, so Carface makes a deal with the devil, or at least a truly demonic canine named Belladonna (Bebe Neuwirth). If he holds up his end of the bargain, Christmas will be ruined forever. But Charlie (Steven Weber, the third actor to voice the character), his ladylove Sasha (Sheena Easton) and his best friend Itchy (Dom DeLuise) have a plan to stop Carface. With some help from another magical gizmo, this one provided by goody-two-shoes angel Annabelle (Neuwirth), they will take a page out of Dickens’ book and try to show Carface the error of his ways.

Charlie literally hits upon the idea of essentially reenacting A Christmas Carol, so the plot is derivative even within the world of the movie. And for as vile as Carface is – much worse, really, than Scrooge, who was cranky and cold but didn’t go around trying to kill people – it sure doesn’t take long for his heart to start melting. It happens a little too quickly. Then again, I got whiplash from him going back and forth between feeling really emotional over what he was seeing and closing himself off and flying into a violent rage.

I did rather like the first two segments, though. The Christmas Past part features the only decent song in the movie, in which he sadly remembers the little boy he loved who always made excuses for his bad behavior until, one fateful Christmas, he didn’t. Which, he realizes, is why he hates Christmas so much, not to mention why he would rather use others than get attached to them. In the Christmas Present section, I love the fact that Sasha guides Carface while dressed as Santa Lucia – especially since I happened to watch it on Santa Lucia Day. The Christmas Future part, usually so terrifying and desolate, is the weakest of the three, with an annoying centerpiece of Charlie singing a gospel-tinged song about how Carface has to mend his ways.

As with A Christmas Carol - as well as All Dogs Go to Heaven - it’s a youngster in trouble who is really the deciding factor in bringing about the change in heart. In this case, it’s a puppy with a bum leg who reminds Carface of his younger self. That element is sweet enough, though one wonders why Anne Marie, the little girl he abused in the first movie, didn’t have the same sort of effect on him. Additionally, it’s not enough for Carface to awake on Christmas morning wanting to be a better dog. No, he has to decide whether or not to participate in the nefarious plan that seemed so appealing to him hours before, and this aspect of the movie is pretty goofy, since he keeps changing his mind as to whether or not to throw the all-important switch that will hypnotize every dog in San Francisco.

A Christmas Carol is a powerful story, so even though this is nowhere near the best version I have seen, it’s still reasonably touching from time to time. And it’s certainly not the worst version out there. But this is one edition of A Christmas Carol I don’t expect to turn into a Christmas tradition.