The Christmas Tree

POSSIBLE SPOILERS, NOT THAT ANYONE WILL READ THIS REVIEW OR SEE THIS FILM:

I just saw The Nostalgia Critic's review of this made-for-TV animated "Christmas" movie, just published on Christmas day, 2013! It is probably the one and only review this "Christmas" movie ever got. I put "Christmas" in quotations in that, except for a brief fly-over by Santa Claus where he nearly electrocutes the bad guy and magically gives orphans new clothes (all of which takes less than 30 seconds), Christmas is never mentioned. There was an army of animators for this film, which is curious because it is so badly done, and the script (if you can call it that) absolutely did not merit the time and effort it took to make this. I have no doubt the TV stations that aired it were angry about what it must have done to their ratings. It completely misses the spirit of Christmas, and desperate to wrap things up at the end, the narrator says "and so as you can see, you always win when you're good". Uh, what? There's about 2,000 years of history to contradict that.

I feel bad for the animators that put so much effort into producing something so forgettable and irrelevant; I wonder what they thought about it? We will never know, as there are no other reviews for it, and no information about it is available. You will be wasting your time and inflicting considerable pain on yourself if you see this 45 minute film, but you will at least have fun watching The Nostalgia Critic tear it apart. There is so much wrong with this film, that it took him over 30 minutes just to point it all out, which is almost as long as the film! If you want a Christmas animated special, "The Christmas Tree" isn't it. Not that it matters, as it isn't available anywhere; which is perhaps how it should be (alright, you can find it on YouTube; which is probably the only thing saving it from extinction).

Is this movie good? Not by ANY means! It's horrible - poorly animated, poorly acted - but holy horse hooves if it's not entertaining.

My partner and I play this every Christmas while we set up our Christmas tree and make fun of how bad it is every year. That being said, it's kind of charming in that aspect. I look at this film as a comedy. If you go in with that mindset, you'll laugh your butt off.

If you go in expecting a Christmas classic, you'll be horribly disappointed. But if you go in expecting a bad animated film, you'll be delighted. It's hilarious and something to enjoy as a nice background film.

To be fair, after I watched Doug Walker's review I expected this to be bad. And guess what? I was right. This is awful, stupid, poorly animated, poorly acted, and every bit as bad as I imagined. The plot goes like this. A new family arrives in town and the mother Judy (Karen Drygas) get's a job as an assistant to an evil Gestapo head of an orphanage, Mrs. Mavilda (Helen Quinn). But Judy decides that all the kids can have a good Christmas anyways. That sums up the plot. I won't explain anything else because I decided to take the time to make this review a full on rant about how awful this film is. The story is plain stupid, but honestly that is one of the redeeming qualities about the film. What really brings this crap storm is the acting. One end of the scale is Quinn who plays Mavilda, who pretty much screams at the top of her lungs and makes Nicolas Cage look subtle. On the opposite end of the scale are the child actors who make no effort whatsoever to put any kind of emotion in their characters. The other big problem is the animation which is really choppy and badly done. The film overall is just horrible! Let's just leave this pile of manure at that!

Before "Rapsittie Street Kids: Believe in Santa", we got this God-awful mess. Out of all the Christmas movies I've seen, this one is arguably the worst one of all. I'm serious. This is the very bottom of the barrel, and that's saying something given all the crappy movies I've watched.

The story is boring and unoriginal. How many Christmas stories involve orphans? Or a nasty Scrooge like character like Mrs. Mavilda? The only scrap of potential for a story came from the titular Pine Tree, Mrs. Hopewell, but it was all squandered. Instead, the plot focused more on Judy and her relationship with the orphans. But even then, the acting and dialogue is so wooden, it falls completely flat.

No doubt thanks to a shoe-string budget, the animation is terrible and looks maybe twenty years out of date by 1991 standards. The best we see is limited to the title card, the opening scene, and Santa Claus's clothes granting magic at the end. The colors and scenery are depressingly faded and dull looking. All the characters' movements are static and choppy looking. 90% of the time, only their eyes and mouths move as they stand around and talk, and even then, the lip sync is terrible. The character models all have dead, heavily lidded gazes like they're half-asleep. Sometimes, they looked outright creepy, like the orphans collectively smiling and nodding at Pappy and Lily with their lifeless eyes like their possessed. If that doesn't freak you out, maybe Mavilda's craggy, snarling face when she threatens to chop down Mrs. Hopewell will.

With the exception of Dingo Pictures, the voice acting here is the most ridiculously poor I've ever heard. The "voice actors" were all obviously family members of the cast and crew who had no prior experience at all. Judy and Ray sounded as if they were hopped up on something, even when they believe their daughter is dead. The mayor's voice frequently cracked. The kids were the worst. The orphan with glasses is obviously voiced by a grown woman, Lily's voice actress was so young, she spoke in unintelligible babbling half the time, and one orphan had an adults voice pitched up so much, he sounds like a Martian. Only Mavilda does an even remotely enjoyable job with her hammy, cackling villain routine, but even then, she screamed like a maniac so loudly in one scene, she broke her mic.

The corny, low-quality music sounds like it was made by a cheap electronic keyboard; a middle-schooler could have made better music. The editing was choppy, especially with the dialogue as the characters speak one line after another without pausing.

This film was just a God-awful, 45-minute disaster that lacked any heartwarming Christmas spirit. And the moral at the end was so idiotic: 'You always win when you're good' which just says that being good is a get out of jail free card. Mrs. Mavilda should have been locked up after all she did. It's all so ridiculous, it makes you want to facepalm. Even today, thirty-three years later, it's reviled as arguably the worst Christmas special ever made. Say what you want about "Rapsittie Street Kids: Believe in Santa", but at least that film had good voice talent on board. But even so, the only reason to ever watch this is to laugh at how ridiculously bad it is, so watch it for free on Tubi if you're looking for a cheap chuckle.

There are people out there who are actually very good at drawing cartoons. It's a talent or a gift they've had since early childhood, where they just seem better at drawing cartoon characters than the average kid, and the love and joy they get from their craft can only be described as highly intense. And as they grow up they wish to share their talents with others, and make a career out of doing what they love. But due to a lack of resources, problems with health, ability, or money their dreams fell like just that, only dreams. And then, they see THIS monstrosity of a cartoon with ZERO talent and effort put into it, and it's because it's so horrible that it gets so much attention! This is the human race in a nutshell, ladies and gentlemen! A person like me, whose hopes and dreams of ever being a successful cartoon maker are crushed while, garbage like this gets put out for the world to see! People really don't value talent or skill anymore, after all it's just so much easier to crank out a total mess like this movie. What a stupid world!