Watching: KLAUS

Year: 2019
Rating: PG
Directors: Sergio Pablos, Carlos Martinez Lopez
The first animated feature film to appear on Netflix (after a brief theatrical release) is the long-ago tale of a spoiled, cocky young rich dude named Jesper (voiced by Jason Schwartzman), currently attending the postal academy to become a postman and follow in his family's business, whose laziness and lack of caring make him the worst student in the school's history. To combat this, Jesper's exasperated father decides to teach his son a lesson and sends him off to work as a postman at the most desolate, frozen post office in the world ... in Smeerensburg, which rests on a frozen island in the Arctic Circle. With no choice but to go or forfeit his lavish lifestyle, Jesper is sent with the goal of moving 6,000 letters out of the tiny town before he can leave, but when he arrives finds the inhabitants of Smeerensburg just as cold, unrelenting, and bleak as the town itself. The town is, in fact, stuck in the middle of a feud that's been going on for millennia, the adults all hateful and angry and vindictive and passing these traits onto their awful children - so that even when Jesper learns that hope may lie in the form of a reclusive toymaker named Klaus, who lives on the far side of the island, he must still wonder whether Smeerensburg can even be saved. How I loved this film; the animation style is very unique and old-fashioned, completely fitting with the slightly-tweaked origin story of how writing letters to Santa came to be; according to IMDb, director Sergio Pablos wanted to do a traditionally animated film, but wanted to see how animation might have evolved had computer-generated animation never come along, so he used CGI lighting techniques with hand-drawn animation - and the result, on screen, is quite beautiful, with some scenes that visually took my breath away. The voice acting is terrific (JK Simmons as Klaus and Joan Cusack as the evil Mrs. Krum are total standouts), the script walking that fine line of Christmas sentimentality vs. "too much sugar" without ever toppling over into the latter. Funny, lovely, and touching (yes, a tear or two in the eyes at the end) make this one of the best Christmas animated films I've seen in ages, and one of my favorite films seen in 2019.  9.5/10 stars