L'albero di Natale

I have a little secret. Come closer... closer... Jeez, not THAT close. Now, I'm going to tell you a secret... And I don't want it to go any further than between you, me and the millions of other people who read my reviews. Do you understand?

I enjoy watching SOME bad movies. Not the ones that bore me to tears, or the cheesy ones, the unfunny ones... you get the picture. I'm referring to the flicks that are so terrible in every single department, they exude a weird kind of fascination. Who wrote this? Who paid for this? Who agreed to it's release? AND WHERE THE HECK IS MY TUNA MAYO SANDWICH?!

*Ahem* Ssooo... this brings me neatly to The Christmas Tree, which is a TV movie that you'll in all likelihood never see, but one which fulfills all the above criteria to a tee. (HEY IT RHYMES!!!) I found out about it online where it built up a rather infamous reputation, and being the sucker I am I just had to open Pandora's Box and give it a sneak peek.

Ladies and Gentleman... It did NOT disappoint. Well, it does if you're after a heartwarming spectacle for the festive period, but I didn't go into it with that mindset, Y'see? The creepy, almost static animation. The random, nonsensical plot. The barely coherent voiceovers. The dialogue. Oh my, the dialogue. Who speaks like this? Clue: no-one.

At only 45 minutes long, it leaves a lasting impression... of the wrong kind. Wasn't there ANYONE, somewhere along the production line, who took a closer look at the steaming pile that were putting together, and realised the horror they were about to unleash? Didn't anyone attempt to stop it, and make themselves a hero in the process?

Apparently not... and thousands of families around the globe are paying the price for their inaction. Remember kids, all it takes is for one good man to do nothing, and... 1/10.

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!

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.

Christmas Tree is about orphaned kids trying to save a tree while under the care of a ruthless and greedy caretaker.

Acting - The worst group of acting of any animated movie PERIOD. The acting children are so inconsistent you wonder if they had drunk in the casting department. One sounds like they just learn how to talk, one kid sounds like they are from outer space, and one sounds like an adult. One kid you can barely understand. The actor of the father is the worst of the bunch. None of them show no emotion or effort except the caretaker Mrs. Mavilda can show too much emotion.

Sometimes you wonder if they had a director since the direction is bad and lazy

The animation is terrible and many of the aspects is terrible and can be quite creepy.

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.