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Charles Dickens’ story of Christmastime is now a virtual requirement for every yuletide reveler. If December goes by and you don’t read or hear or see a film or theatrical adaptation of the classic tale, you practically have to surrender your license to make merry. But that’s A Christmas Carol I’m talking about. This, on the other hand, is Cricket on the Hearth, some other Christmas thing Dickens apparently wrote but nobody’s ever heard of. I’ve certainly never read the original story, but knowing it’s Dickens I’m sure you can guess what’s in store in this cartoon: unfathomable misery suffered by people who don’t deserve it, cruel and miserly taskmasters with heavy-handed surnames, and completely retarded coincidences so preposterous as to boggle the mind. I know I can’t wait!

The story is essentially as follows. Mr. Plummer, a toymaker, and Bertha, his daughter, make toys. Bertha had a boyfriend but he went off to join the navy. Also, a cricket lives in their house, a cricket named Crocket. His sense of fashion is nowhere near as keen as Don Johnson’s, but there you have it. And then, one day, misery strikes in a big Dickensian way.

Bertha’s naval boyfriend was?wait for it?lost at sea! When an ugly, unsympathetic man comes to deliver the message of his death, Bertha is so astonished by the news that she’s immediately rendered blind, as so often happens when people get surprised. As a result of her new affliction, Bertha develops incredible skill at the game of pinball; eventually, so many people are thrilled by her crazy flipper fingers that they hail her as a messiah. It seems like everything’s looking up for ol’ Bertha. Until, that is, the toymaker realizes he’s spent all his money on pinball tables and creepy treatments from Jack Nicholson, and now he and his blind daughter are broke and so they must go?this is Dickens, remember?to the poorhouse.

On the way to the poorhouse, Mr. Plummer takes a job at a really mean dude’s toy factory, except the mean dude doesn’t pay him, so they’re still poor and miserable, and whatever. The plot’s no longer important. It’s a Christmas story, so I’m sure you’ll all be able to surmise that the lost lover returns, Bertha regains her sight and the evil boss has a patented Dickens Last Minute Holiday Change of Heart. No surprises there.

But what’s with this cricket? The guy’s right there in the title of the piece, but I’ve barely said a thing about him. Well, frankly, that’s because he doesn’t do much. He’s really more of an observer than an active participant in the events of the story, so why he gets title status I do not know. Cricket Crocket is the focus of one particularly noteworthy sequence, though, although it’s mostly a diversion and doesn’t really have any impact on the story. Mr. Plummer’s evil boss decides, for whatever reason, that this cricket is a serious threat to him. Needing a solution to this problem, he orders his crow henchman, Uriah Caw, to do something about the cricket menace. Uriah goes to a seedy bar down by the docks, watches an overweight cat perform some sort of weird burlesque stage show, and meets up with a dog and a monkey who are ostensibly assassins-for-hire. They eagerly accept the job of getting rid of the cricket, because they know a sea captain who will pay good money for captive crickets, which he then sells in China. Seriously.

The monkey and the dog kidnap Crocket and take him to the shady sea captain. Instead of paying them, the captain pulls out his handgun and kills the two thugs, execution style. BLAM, BLAM! They’re dead. I don’t know about you, but when I think of a Rankin-Bass animated Christmas special, the first thing that comes to mind is not necessarily cold-blooded gunfire murder. But maybe I’ve always just been missing important subtext in The Little Drummer Boy. Shortly thereafter, Crocket manages to return home through a series of those insane Dickens coincidences that really allow all his characters to remain completely passive all the time, because the events of their lives are basically determined entirely by random chance.

In all, Cricket on the Hearth is neither particularly bad nor particularly good. Certainly, it pales in comparison with other Rankin Bass holiday extravaganzas like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Frosty the Snowman. But it has an enjoyable cast—including Danny and Marlo Thomas, Hans Conried and Roddy McDowall as our cricket pal—and it ends with the warm-and-fuzzy feeling you expect from a Christmas cartoon. So it may not be great, but it’s at least competent. The problem is, I don’t think any TV channels air this thing anymore, meaning if you wanted to see it you’d have to actively seek it out, and by that point you’ve put in more effort than it’s worth.

If You Hated This, You Will Also Totally Hate:

• Mickey’s Christmas Carol
• The Muppet Christmas Carol
• Raiders of the Lost Ark
• Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town
• Fun and Fancy Free