"Prancer" is Better Than "E.T."

The story-line for Prancer is as follows: a happy and clueless country girl wrestling with the incomprehensible misery of her wealthless, widower father takes in what she believes to be Santa’s very own “Prancer” – third in the order of his mythical reindeer – nursing it back to health in secrecy. Think of Steven Spielberg’s E.T., but with a holiday spin.

If in-name a film oriented on the Christmas mythology, Prancer is hardly interesting for it. Prancer could have been about anything: a stray dog or an injured horse as much as a wounded reindeer. Like many Christmas movies, Prancer is not so much about the festive holiday dressings as it is a celebration of the joy and redemption brokered by Christmas spirit. Or more specifically, childhood wonderment and dedication. While not a perfect film, Prancer shines in its spotlighting of little Jessica with an unwavering fascination for life and the mystical, shunned by the miserable adults in her life until they too gleam.

But what that strayed reindeer has to do with any of the good vibrations in the film beats me. Why call it Prancer, why have a reindeer at all if he hardly matters? My one gripe with Prancer would be the inclusion of the titular reindeer in the first place. His place is shallow, and his impact is hardly-felt. For a film so similar to Spielberg’s E.T., the non-human companion character is rather flat and ineffective. Jessica loves him only because she loves everything; nothing about this animal is that attention-grabbing, nor world-changing. The core family dynamic of background struggle and silent financial woes is neither better nor worsened by Prancer’s presence – at most, he costs a few bags of hay which Jessica sneaks out to the barn, but evens the score when the father sells him for a few hundred bucks. Prancer’s net-effect is just about zero; whatever resolution the film arrives at is one which didn’t necessarily require his involvement whatsoever. Every scene with him is mostly a short distraction from the actual meat of the movie: the bright shine of a great daughter, and the strife of a well-meaning, if cantankerous, father. When the focus is drawn away from this, Prancer loses steam.

Prancer is hardly magical; and instead it feels authentic. A light tracing of Spielberg’s E.T. without the sense of adventure and enchantment (“Prancer” is merely a decently trained reindeer, nothing mascot-worthy). In fact, Prancer is at its worst when at its most magical; the silence of family misery is best remedied by the human emotion more so than the elegance of a (not so) extraordinary visitor. Prancer, as a character, solves little to nothing; I don’t think Jessica nor her father come to any great truth through this elegant beast living in their backyard. The most-honest character-expressions are goaded out through the long-term simmering of background familial emotions which existed for a time prior to Prancer’s arrival. Again, the reindeer plays no particularly unique or vital role; it’s more about family than magic.

And I think I like that about Prancer. Where a classic family film like E.T. spends so much more of itself on creating a sympathetic, if foreign, creature with long-term memorability, Prancer includes that non-human mystical element, only to do away with it mostly. There’s hardly any magic to be found in Prancer – especially when weighed against E.T. – save for that which may be observed in a passionate and good-natured child: and that’s enough for me.

Prancer is E.T. with its arms chopped off. Neither quite as magical, nor as cruel. Prancer might engage in casual belittling of children by self-loathing adults, but it never reaches the exploitative cruelty of E.T. Watching Prancer for some reason awoke long-buried memories I’d stored from childhood viewings of E.T., in which I found myself in tears for the hearty and helpless creature being put in unwilling experimentation by faceless government operatives. I recall something dark about that memory; tears I shed, yet I was just as angry as I was sad. As my cheeks dried, I came to find a kindling of rage I didn’t understand boil inside. I knew somehow, somewhere deep down, that I’d been cheaply exploited, programmed and pushed in gross ways. Spielberg drew tears out of me, though I’d only cried because of cruelty’s depiction; a filmmaking feat about as noble and respectable as filming infant cancer patients who read off of scripts for a commercial. There is nothing impressive nor note-worthy about the portrayal of depravity nor the meanness of man. Alien torture is nothing I’d ever hope to let a child see (or hear) in a movie, because there is nothing uplifting about such art.

Reflecting on it, E.T. is spiritually dark: gross emotional manipulation wearing the mask of childhood wonderment. As a kid, I shed tears watching E.T. because it depicted abject cruelty on a misunderstood alien lifeform – a heinous thing to subject a child audience to. I shed tears watching Prancer because of its touching resolution of family crisis. The distinction seems pretty clear to me. Prancer, the less enchanting of the two, carries a more innocent spirit.

Prancer is silly and not entirely serious; yet is nonetheless a simple and well-meaning celebration of innocence. A light tracing of Spielberg's E.T. storyline, Prancer is not quite as enchanted, magical, nor memorable to the public conscious as that light sci-fi was; but as a film, it avoids both the strangeness and gross cruelty of the former. E.T. is classic; Prancer is not. Still, Prancer might be more spiritually sound than E.T.; I certainly felt cleaner after watching it.