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).

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.

Judging by "The Christmas Tree", one would assume that producer Flamarion Ferreira and writer Nels Christianson have been isolated from the rest of humanity for most of their lives. I suppose they were going for a "family movie" vibe but everything feels... off. The plot is boring, the dialog is atrocious, and the animation is just bizarre. The whole thing is just creepy which probably isn't the adjective they were hoping would be used to describe this production. But the fact that this train wreck somehow got distribution shows that literally ANYONE can make and sell a film no matter how bad it is.

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!

With the right execution, a combination of an animation based around Christmas could have worked out well. Unfortunately with The Christmas Tree, the execution was just wrong and it didn't work out at all. The animation is, like the three terrible animated Titanic movies, terribly static, the character designs will leave kids traumatised, there is no fluidity(and little movement, for that matter), it looks very sparse and the colours are completely flat. The synthesised music is just as creepy as the character designs, has no warmth to it and for personal tastes doesn't fit at all. The dialogue is very corny and tired, further disadvantaged by the sloppy lip-synching(find a moment where the dialogue actually matches the lip movements actually). Every bit as bad is the voice acting, which is just as bad as the voice acting for the Video Brinquedo animations, which has some of the worst voice acting in all mankind. Monotone, garbled and wooden has been described, and those three words sum the voice acting up brilliantly, if there has been worse voice acting for children in any animation(film, show or special) I've yet to hear it. You don't identify with the characters one bit, they have dull or obnoxious personalities and how they're animated and voice further accentuate that, the titular character is almost completely sidelined. And the story screams of laziness, mean-spirited instead of heart-warming, dull instead of thrilling and full of padding that has no relevance whatsoever to what's happening in the first place. Admittedly the idea wasn't a particularly great or original one to begin with, but if The Christmas Tree was watchable at least that wouldn't have mattered. So in conclusion, as bad as has been said, even worse than Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer, Legend of Frosty the Snowman, Star Wars Holiday Special and Frosty Returns(Night B4 Christmas I remember hating as well). A disgrace to animation and you won't feel festive watching it. 1/10 Bethany Cox