Well I really did like this animation, but I just cannot bring myself to watch it again. The main reason for this is that my memories of my dog who recently died, come flooding back when I watched it. Which in turn made me an emotional wreck for the following hour. I am going to take this as a good thing for the creators to make such an impact from their animation. But again I am sure I don't want to go through this again. So great animation but if you lost a dog recently, it will bring the memories flooding back and make you somewhat sad and depressed for a while. I guess if you don't have a dog or have not lost a dog then the impact of the animation might be a lot less. But for me one view is enough.

30 years after the Oscar-nominated "The Snowman", it was finally time for a sequel. Now given how popular and beloved the original was, this was quite a risky endeavor. However, in my opinion they did everything right here. Let me start by saying that I like "The Snowman", but it's not among my favorite Christmas movies or anything. They made a good job with the animation here. The style resembles "The Snowman" obviously, but they also brought in new elements and made it more fitting for today's generation, mostly by making this a much more colorful watch. The music is another great aspect. Just like with the original, they used a nice song for the flying scene, but also in other moments you will like what you hear.

Hilary Audus was the director of this 25-minute Christmas short film 3 years ago and she also already worked as an animator on the 1982 film. It's a bit sad that John Coates died shortly before this film here got released. Oh well, maybe they showed him a copy beforehand. Who knows. Anyway, it is one year later and the protagonist, the little boy from the old film, is sad because his snowman friend is not with him. So he builds him and he also builds a snowdog for him and of course the two come to life the next morning. Nice idea with the socks on the dog's ears. That certainly made it more memorable. The Snowman takes his 2 new pals on a journey during which they meet a whole village of snowmen and even, briefly, Santa Claus.

This is such a harmonic movie with wonderful animation style and it goes very well with the music. Not even the competitive penguin tries something fishy during the skiing contest in order to win. The ending is very well done too. It is happy with the dog and sad with the Snowman and, even if it was slightly predictable, I think this was absolutely the right way to go in terms of emotion. I don't care about grumpy people who complain about this lacking the charm of the original. I think this is a wonderful little movie, excellent watch during the holidays and in my opinion all the more modern aspects added to it make it an even better work than the 1982 original. Highly recommended and it is also a good watch for non-English speakers as there is no text or dialogue in here.

THE SNOWMAN AND THE SNOWDOG is an attempt to sequelise the much-loved Raymond Briggs classic of the 1980s, a half-hour piece of animation that I challenge anybody to sit through without crying. A perennial favourite that's always in the schedules come Christmastime, THE SNOWMAN is my favourite Christmas film ever, so this sequel/remake has its work cut out.

The plus points: well, there's only one really, and that's the quality of the animation. It's done to match the original, and it looks great, refreshingly old-fashioned and hand-drawn instead of modernised.

The bad stuff: the storyline is a weak revamp of the original's, with added elements and ingredients that contribute little (the dog, the plane, etc.). It was much better when it was more simple. There's none of the power, danger, devastation or magical stuff from the original. In many places it seems bland, and a bit overly sentimental.

With no 'Walking in the Air', the music is also a letdown, just some generic pop-sounding slush added in its place. You can tell that Briggs wasn't involved in the production because whatever magic there was before has long disappeared - or should that be, melted away...