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I just watched this with my 3 year old grandson and 1-1/2 year old granddaughter. Lucky most of the appalling story plot went over his head and she lost interest and started playing. I considered turning it off but decided to let him finish watching it, so I wouldn't have to explain why I didn't think it was appropriate.

Aside from the fact that Niko's mother had a one-night stand with one of Santa's reindeer, Prancer is a dead-beat father who first didn't even want to admit that he was Niko's dad. Afterall, what would a womanizing, conceited, barhopping, flying reindeer want with a little kid around, right? And then they even showed all the reindeer burping after they had their drink, giving Niko some too and looking expectingly at him until he burps too. Nice manners to be teaching! That singing weasel was extremely annoying, I could have done without that. And that tune she was singing at the bar reminded me an awful lot of "Santa Baby".

And don't even get me started on the pink poodle lost in the woods and the moss eating (vegetarian?) wolf who wants to be taught how to be a dog.

I'm glad the 1-1/2 year old went off to play before the black wolf and his horde started getting really mean, she might have gotten scared. She started crying during the part of Disney's Snow White, when Snow White was lost in the woods in the dark and all those eyes were scaring her. I can just imagine what would have happened, had she seen those growling, snarling wolves.

The dubbing was terrible. Like one of the other commenters, I also had trouble understanding what they were singing in the beginning and caught on to it later on: flying forces, not flying horses. And why did some of the characters call the kid Nieco and others pronounced it like Nicko? No consistency whatsoever.

Terrible terrible movie. No humor whatsoever and a plot more akin to a reality show. What a waste of time, money & talent.

I found this movie to be very similar to the movies Absolute Zero and The Day After Tomorrow. All three movies have a sudden deep freeze as the main theme. Of course you have the lone scientist who goes against the theories of the main stream scientists and gets ostracized for it. Then of course it turns out that he is the only one who is right and all the others are wrong. They screw things up more by trying to fix it with the wrong approach and in the end it is up to our outsider scientist hero to save the world. And of course you have to have the scientist be a dad who has to go rescue his kid. It's really nothing new, it's the same old story, just told in a slightly different way. An OK movie to watch, but too predictable.

I had misgivings even before watching this one but wanted to check it out nonetheless. I mean, how could they possibly top the 1959 version with Charleton Heston? Answer: they can't! This made for TV version has a weak cast with mediocre acting. The characters that were so memorable and likable in the Charleton Heston version were poorly developed in this one. I couldn't get myself to care about any of them at all, not even the title character. The movie seems hurried throughout and the scenes that were so spectacular in the 1959 version, particularly the galley battle scene and the chariot race, left me utterly disappointed in this one. I would dare say the silent version from 1925 was better than this one. I don't know what the director and producer of this mini series were hoping to accomplish, but whatever it was, they failed miserably. Lew Wallace must have been turning over in his grave, it simply did not do his book justice the same way the previous two film versions did and even the early 1907 version as a matter of fact. I can see the need to make a remake for the silent black and white movie to update with sound and color. And the 1959 MGM Technicolor version was one of the greatest movies ever made. A monumental epic with a cast of thousands, great stars in the leading roles and William Wyler as the director, they just don't make movies like that anymore.

Just like with the remakes of War Of The Worlds and Planet Of The Apes, this remake was totally unnecessary and can't hold a candle to the much better 1959 version. I say: Leave the timeless classics alone! A great movie can stand on it's own without the need for an "updated" version.