This is very much not the appropriate season for this film but we could all do with some lighter fare and cheering up in these trying times. I suppose this counts as a second tier animation film as its quality and budget are visibly inferior to the box office releases. In another era, we would have called this a direct to video film but a Netflix release doesn’t sound so denigrating these days. Note that while this is an English language film and features many famous voice actors, it was actually made by a Spanish animation studio.

Jesper is the privileged and spoiled son of the Postmaster General and is currently flunking out of the postman training academy. His father issues him an ultimatum to shape up or be thrown to the streets, sending him to the remote island of Smereensburg to establish a working postal system there. He arrives to find it a cesspit of hatred and violence where none of the children go to the school and the local teacher Alva has to resort to selling fish to survive. As Jespers tries to figure out a way to create demand for sending letters, he investigates an isolated house where a mysterious woodcutter Klaus lives with a shed full of toys. By chance, he drops a drawing made by a lonely boy in town. The woodsman sees this and forces Jesper to help him deliver a toy to the boy to cheer him up. The happy boy spreads this news to the other children and Jesper takes advantage of this by getting them to write letters to Klaus in exchange for toys.

It’s plain to see that this is a reframing of the familiar story of Santa Claus with the inclusion of a postman character at its center. The wonder of it is that while it’s mostly very predictable, it’s still novel enough and most importantly is well made enough that it makes for pleasant watching. The art is nowhere near Disney or Pixar levels of quality but it is good enough and you get used to it once you feel more invested in the characters. Note that this is traditional animation, albeit with computer assistance, rather than 3D animation. I think that the pacing here is particularly well done as there are no clumsy breaks to sings songs or to expand side stories. I also appreciated how the film tries to keep things plausible and reasonably realistic. While the children of course perceive the delivery of the toys are being wondrous works of magic, Jesper and Klaus achieve the feats through entirely mundane means.

At heart this is still a film aimed primarily at children so it’s best not to set your expectations too high. It’s a little funny that it inserts the role of the postman into the usual Christmas mythology but it’s also strangely appropriate for our time. Overall it makes for decent enough entertainment and it is kind of cool to see director Sergio Pablos succeeding in this after spending his whole career working for major studios before taking off to start his own studio.