Review of The Junky's Christmas

"The Junky's Christmas" is an American (mostly) animated short film from 1993, so this one has its 25th anniversary soon and it was written and narrated by William S. Burroughs, who we also see in here slightly under the age of 80 already. It is a little black-and-white movie made for the holidays and Burroughs' inclusion as well as the runtime should tell you already that this is a pretty dark and inconvenient story, no sweet feel-good happy ending stuff for your kids to watch, but a movie of slightly over 20 minutes that won't let us forget about the ugly truth that may come with life only because it is the holidays. As you can easily see from the title, addiction and drugs as well as lonesomeness are crucial ingredients here. Burroughs did a job as good as I expected with the narration while I also liked the other aspects of the audio here like sound effects and music that turned this into a really good watch most of the time. The one thing I was not too fond of was the animation style, but that's just subjective I guess. It still fits the tone and atmosphere of it all and it's also not a problem that it looks way older than early 90s. The ugliness of the locations and characters was in fact exactly what the movie needed. I just cannot put a finger on it really what bothered me. Still all in all, this was a good watch and I give it a recommendation. This was certainly a somewhat different Christmas special, but that's far from the only reason to see it. There are several pretty classy production values attached to it and the story even reaches greatness occasionally. One for the disadvantaged. And those empathic enough to care about their existence too. See it, not just during the holidays. This is a solid watch all year, don't be tricked by the title into thinking otherwise. Pretty bleak, but also pretty good.