Mickey's Twice Upon a Christmas

Christmas-themed DVDs are so plentiful -- and profitable -- that it seems like every kid-friendly movie franchise, cartoon, and TV series creates one to release before each holiday season. This benign Disney entry in the Christmas genre seems like just another churned-out special. The computer-generated animation isn't up to Disney's usual standards, and the stories lack the kind of charm that you'd expect from the Mouse Factory. It's sweet (albeit a bit odd) to see Goofy's son realize that his silly father isn't purposely trying to embarrass him -- he just loves him to death -- and those rascally brothers Huey, Dewey, and Louie are always funny, but the videos are just a passing diversion, nothing memorable.

But if you watch this DVD, be sure to play the behind-the-scenes features, which include a fascinating look at how Daisy and Minnie's ice-skating routines were based on Olympic skater Michelle Kwan's movements. The thorough interview with Kwan and footage of her skating the choreographed scenes in the movie is a treat. And in interviews with the animators, they admit that in the Pluto sequence, the reindeer were originally drawn as a host of other animals "training" to become reindeer, which explains why they don't look like reindeer at all.