(courtesy IMDb)
SNAPSHOT
The Emmy-winning franchise returns after more than a decade, following Christmas elves Lanny and Wayne as their holiday mission unfolds with many merry mishaps. The fourth installment [sic] continues the holiday adventures of an elite team that prepares homes worldwide for Santa’s arrival. (courtesy Disney+ media)
After a gap of some 14 years, the two unlikeliest elf pals in festive storytelling history, Lanny and Wayne (Derek Richardson and Dave Foley respectively) return for the fifth instalment in the Prep & Landing series.
Prep & Landing: The Snowball Protocol once again sees carefree Wayne, who never met a rule he wanted to disregard, and Lanny, who’s sweet and earnest and who shouldn’t be investing all his time and energy into a wholly unequal friendship, working through a series of hair-raising moments under the penetrating inquisitional glare of Santa Claus (Christopher Swindle who replaces the late W. Morgan Sheppard) who seems to be trying to get Wayne to some sort of misdeed.
Under what Wayne believes is some heavy-duty confessional pressure – it’s not because this is the sweetly funny and lightly festive Prep & Landing series – but he and Lanny have an issue in the opening sequence which has left Wayne feeling guilty (he is the cause of said issue which triggers the “snowball protocol” where neither friend can admit it happened) and convinced Santa is un happy with him.
Under self-imagined pressure, he admits to not one but two incidents where he fouled things up and sent them sideways which, surprise, surprise, aren’t at all what Santa is after (he is pushing for something quite lovely and mostly finds Wayne’s confessions to be amusing).
While the incidents are fun in themselves, and there’s a lot made of the angst between Wayne and his organisational nemesis, Magee (Sarah Chalke), and the Christmassy world-building is a joy including cable care capsules shaped like old-fashioned baubles and candy canes used as meditation prompts (by new Age elf, Renato, voiced by Manny Jacinto who is a hoot), Prep & Landing: The Snowball Protocol doesn’t really feel like a cohesive festive special.
Its delightful and fun and cute as far as it goes, and it’s lovely to spend time with these characters again, but because the special lacks much of an overarching narrative thrust, beyond its messaging that friendship is precious and should be treasured – a lesson Wayne, not Lanny, unsurprisingly needs to heed – it feels a little underbaked and leaves not much of an impression.
All the good Christmas specials should wrap you in their world absolutely and completely during their brief run times – A Charlie Brown Christmas is a great example of how beautifully this can work – but while Prep & Landing: The Snowball Protocol hints at it, and feels cosy and lovely intermittently, especially at the really heartwarming end, it never really delivers, making this new instalment in the much-loved series feel less like a story unto itself and more a series of shorts in search of a greater whole which it never really finds.
Prep & Landing: The Snowball Protocol streams on Disney+