Movie Thoughts: Niko & the Way to the Stars (2008)

• Released: 10 October 2008
• Directed by: Michael Hegner, Kari Juusonen
• Running time: 1 h 20 min
• Rating 3.5/5

Synopsis

A young reindeer sets out to find Santa's Flying Forces, one of which he believes is his father. All the while this is going on, he's being followed by a pack of ravenous wolves deadset on eating all the of Santa's reindeer.

My Thoughts

This movie came out in 2008? God, that's making me feel old. Anyways, this was one of the only Christmas-related movies I even remotely enjoyed in the past five years or so. This, Klaus and the Goodtimes adaptation of Rudolph's story. Other than that I just grew really unsympathetic towards the holiday. But I felt like reviewing this movie today. Does it actually hold up? Well, sorta?

The story is simple but I like it. It's not the usual reindeer story you'll see in Santa movies, with it being completely Rudolph-unrelated. Rather, it's the son of one of Santa's reindeer trying to find his father and outsmart a pack of wolves. And it kind of works as a plot? 

However, there is a major hang-up with the "father is one of the flying reindeer"-concept: Niko is essentially the result of a one-night stand between his mother (a wild reindeer) and one of Santa's tame flying ones. That...just doesn't feel very Christmassy to me. I think it could've worked if maybe his parents were once partners but later separated for unknown reasons, like they had reindeer divorce or something? And it could be about Niko finally finding both sides of his parentage, and realize that he now has two families rather than one. But instead Prancer really just had one date with Oona, fucked her and then just left her pregnant to care for her son alone (later with Julius joining). That's just... not something that screams "Christmas" to me. 

Heck, even when Niko finally meets his father, Prancer at first even just outright denies having Niko as his son, and not until Niko actually proves himself does he come around and be like "oh, by the way, I'm probably your Dad LOL". Like...yikes man.

But this really is my most major hang-up with the movie. Other than that it's decent. Serviceable. I like the visuals for one. While some of the textures haven't aged that well, they do still look rather good for the time and have still aged decently, just not perfectly. The snow looks much better than any of the snow in Alpha and Omega, which came out years later and had thrice as much budget, for example. The fur textures also still look pretty okay, except for Niko's hinted love interest Saga, who just looks like she has a messy/wet fur all the time despite that clearly not being the intention. 

I also just have to praise this movie for its character designs. Well, some of them, anyways. This remains one of the only Christmas movies that actually has reindeer in it that actually look like reindeer. If you look at the reindeer in any Rudolph movie or Annabelle's Wish, for example, you'll see they look much closer to regular deer (e.g. whitetails) than actual reindeer. Reindeer/caribou are quite unique looking cervids. They have a hunched posture, short tails, large hooves, antlers on both genders depending on the time of year and no clear nose disc. Most movies have them high on their legs, with small hooves, a head-held-high posture, button noses and antlers only on the males.

But this movie gets most of it correctly. There are obviously some liberties taken (males shouldn't be carrying antlers this time of year and they do have upper front teeth) but these actually look like reindeer. Which I can definitely commend. 

Some of the other character designs are also...decent. But others are mixed. I like the idea behind the designs of the wolves, taking stuff like their hunched posture, long muzzles and big paws and taking it more to the extreme. I think they went a tad too far with it, however. Specs and the nameless background wolves do look okay, but Smiley and Black Wolf just look way too overdone. Their heads are so big it's ridiculous. Black Wolf looks like they just needed an idea for a villain and were like "well, if we give it saber fangs, retractable claws and inverted eyes it should be fine". They could've been a bit more subtle with it. But the concept for the models is okay, it's the execution that feels kind of botched. Also, the wolves move like really weird, quite distracting.

The other character designs I'm not too fond of to be honest. Julius is not my favorite and he has man boobies for some reason, Wilma doesn't look like a stoat when it comes to her face and her torso, and Essie just looks like a standard poodle with no creativity applied whatsoever. Santa does make an appearance but he's constantly kept in the shadows so we don't really see him.

Then there's the environmental designs: I quite like them. It would be easy for the environments to get boring since essentially all we do really get is 90% snow-covered tundra, but there's a variety of forests, cliffs, mountains, etc. that keeps stuff interesting. Santa's Fell also has an interesting design. I really expected it to be this cheerful Christmas village bursting with life, lights and elves, but instead it's a heavily guarded and quite desolate place. Definitely an interesting take on Santa's home base.

Then there's the characters. I quite like them. Niko is pretty generic, but you do feel for the boy who lacks a father and is constantly bullied for believing in his dreams. Heck, even Julius in the end admits that he didn't truly think Niko could fly all this time. In the end of course it's revealed that Niko truly is Prancer's son and that he can fly, but the journey to get there was interesting. 

The other characters vary. I like Wilma and Julius, while not my favorite, does have a heartfelt arc around him essentially having adopted Niko and being way more of a father figure than Prancer ever was. Specs and Essie's arc was pretty much useless, but it was nice seeing that not all of the wolves in this movie were rotten villains. The other reindeer aren't that interesting (Santa's Forces included). 

The main villain, Black Wolf, just feels way too over the top, much like his earlier described design. Like, having an over the top villain can be fine, but the execution just doesn't work. BW's big plan is to eat the Flying Forces in order to take the reindeer's place as flying animals and visit all children at Christmas and eat them. That plan alone is ridiculous, but even in the universe of the movie it just doesn't make sense. It's literally confirmed that the ability to fly is a genetic trait, not something you just obtain by eating a flying reindeer, so the plan just doesn't make sense and it makes our main villain seem hopelessly incompetent.

I think a good alternative would've been if Black Wolf went after Niko's herd after realizing he couldn't get to the flying forces. That way his conflict would still have something to do with our main character, but it wasn't so outright ridiculous. But I guess they really wanted to have the main conflict be revolving around the holiday so this is what we ended up with.

The acting is...well honestly mostly fine except for one: our main character. I don't know who they got to voice Niko in the English dub, but they just cannot emote well when voice acting. Even emotional lines in key moments of the movie just feel so lacking in emotion, so it really did get distracting. The rest of the cast is fine, but since it's Niko, our protagonist, out of all characters who didn't have a good VA, it's quite distracting. 

I definitely wouldn't call this a good film and it sure has its flaws, the lack of good voice acting on Niko and the whole "one night stand"-thing being the most notable, but it does have some good elements in in to make up for the flaws. The animation is good, character designs of the reindeer are nice and the arc regarding Niko realizing that Julius was kind of his father all along was really sweet. I don't think this is a good movie, but I personally like it too much to give it anything below 3.5 stars.