The Nickelodeon cartoon series The Loud House appears to really enjoy Christmas. The series has two half-hour Christmas specials, a couple of standard-length episodes, and a live-action Christmas feature. Now, it has a new animated feature movie. “The Loud House Movie: Naughty and Nice” is the latest installment.
For those who don’t know, The Loud House is a TV series about 12-year-old Lincoln Loud, who lives in a house with his parents and ten sisters, being the only boy and middle child of the family. Episodes range from Lincoln navigating life with his family or with his friends, to stories about his sisters and their lives, and sometimes their parents.
“Naughty and Nice”, for short, is about Lincoln wanting a specific gift for Christmas and finding out that he’s on Santa’s naughty list. He ends up changing his status with a device left by Santa’s elf, causing a worldwide flip where ‘nice’ people get coal after being declared naughty, and ‘naughty’ people get their wishes fulfilled after being declared nice. That’s not all that’s flipped; Santa Claus has also flipped from good to bad. Lincoln regrets his mistake and enlists his family’s help to travel to the North Pole and rectify the situation.
The start of the movie is about an elf named Duncan, who has made a computer system that categorizes people into the naughty and nice categories. The way it starts makes it feel like it’s about him. It eventually reaches the point where it reveals Lincoln is a “flipper,” meaning he bounces back and forth between the two lists. Santa wants Duncan to figure this out and make a final call so he can do his ride. Duncan goes to spy on Lincoln for the status. Lincoln ends up capturing him, and this makes it worse for the boy, as he ends up on the naughty list.
The one thing I felt about this movie is that it didn’t feel like a “Loud House” story; it felt like a story with Loud House being used to fill in the gaps. The opening few minutes focused on Duncan’s storyline, and honestly, it would have been better to create a “Loud House” animated movie about him trying to figure out what to do with a kid who falls in the gray area between naughty and nice. The problem with using Lincoln, who is an established character with established traits and characterization, is that the idea of him being considered to be naughty enough to outweigh his niceness doesn’t fit. None of the things mentioned in the movie that got him on the naughty list sound like something he would do as a character. It’s a hard cognitive dissonance with how he is as a character, especially after season 5.
Lincoln’s actions after finding out he’s on the naughty list also are kind of out of character. He does some good deeds with the intention of getting back on the nice list. Since this wasn’t done with good intentions, it doesn’t work. Then he decides to use the tablet that Duncan left behind to change his position on the list. The movie would have worked better if it weren’t a “Loud House” story or if it had been done to fit Lincoln’s characterization. It could have worked better if it were Lincoln who wanted something for Christmas so bad that he lost focus and did some bad things, but not with malicious intent, and then tried to figure out how to get back on the good list with good intentions.
The other storylines in the movie are a mix. Rita, the Loud mom, wants a Donatello from “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” nutcracker, which is particularly charming, but because of how things are, it does feel in my mind to be a little too corporate. That could just be me. Lynn Sr., the father, wanted a special sauce for figgy pudding. Lisa wanted a giant star. Lucy ends up getting an ugly Christmas sweater. I did like how all these did end up playing into the plot of the movie.
Where Lincoln starts to feel more like Lincoln is when he sees his family and Clyde being depressed after receiving coal. Also, when the “naughty” characters from the show were put on the nice list in the same accident, and there are funny moments of Chandler being mayor, and Flip getting every business in town, which I didn’t think Santa could do, this causes Lincoln to admit his mistake and get on a plan to fix everything. This is where it feels a little more like “The Loud House”.
The plot gets strange when it gets to the North Pole. I liked the inventive way they got to the pole, though. Santa Claus also became evil and thus became the villain of the movie. The concept of an evil Santa or Santa becoming evil is interesting. I like that. Santa is truly menacing as a villain. When Lincoln messes up by trying to keep himself off the naughty list, Santa declares him the most naughty person and tries to convince Lincoln to join him, while throwing the rest of the family into a lifetime of working in the coal mines. Later, he decides to turn people who get in his way into gingerbread men.
The big villain and the plot of Lincoln sacrificing himself have oddly become a staple of animated Loud House movies. This one is the darkest of the three movie sacrifices because here Lincoln had no agency and really depended on someone else saving him. The Loud House has embraced fantasy and sci-fi ideas into the series, which can be hit or miss. I believe it would have been more interesting if it hadn’t involved turning people into gingerbread to eliminate them. While Santa is an interesting and menacing villain, he is also somewhat weak because he lacks agency in his evil actions. The one thing the stands out is how he tries to get Lincoln to join the bad side and demoralizes him to a point. It’s a great way to show the reverse Santa thing. While Santa is an interesting and menacing villain, he is also slightly weak because he lacks agency in being evil. He only has to be turned back by magic.
The movie looks good, but I’m not a big fan of the shaded style and slightly glossy look it has. I think sticking with the show style is much better. The bad North Pole was good-looking and interesting, especially with the red sky. Evil Santa’s design was good, too; the show went for a slightly different style for Santa. His evil look was funny because it looked like a stereotypical old-fashioned biker who was trying to retain his youth.
I think the movie was only fine. I think it would have worked better if it had not been a Loud House affair or had been tuned to fit the Loud House. Especially, Lincoln didn’t feel written like Lincoln Loud from The Loud House for the first half of the movie. The message wasn’t a bad one, where Duncan has to learn that we can’t look at people as one thing or the other, as they are complex. Duncan should have led the movie and could have used all the Louds as a way to figure out his arc, which would have been more interesting. The plot should have fit the characters or made characters that fit the plot.
Overall, I think the movie is fine, but could have been better. Loud House fans might only enjoy for The Loud House, but will be a little bothered by how Lincoln’s characterization was done. I did enjoy the second half a little more than the first half. The animation is alright, and I did like a couple of the songs, including the villain song. I did like the message of the movie even if it’s standard idea of not getting caught up with the gifts for Christmas, and doing good deeds comes from the heart. The strongest message was the one where people are a little more complex.
“A Loud House Christmas Movie: Naughty or Nice” is on Nickelodeon and Nickelodeon on demand.
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