Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer & the Island of Misfit Toys

You could tell this movie had it's heart in the right place, but just about everything else tells you this movie was slapped together without regard for visual appeal or even a good message for kids.

If you listen to the "director's commentary" (you'd think it would be a director's track, but instead it's only a 3-minute interview), they explain how this is the first time anyone on the team had done a computer-animated cartoon before, especially the B-movie director. And while this may have been cute as a bunch of student projects tied together, the whole mess just doesn't belong.

Can't be called a sequel if it has nothing to do with the first, can it?

Rudolph travels to the island of misfit toys to help the elf dentist treat the lion toy. As they sail back they get caught in a storm and meet the Hippo Queen who offers to fix Rudolph's nose if he wants it done. While he is away The Toy Taker raids Santa's toy warehouse and takes all the toys. Rudolph sets out to find the Toy Taker and get all the toys back in time for Christmas by using the island of misfit toys as a trap to draw him out.

Dear Lord but this is one cheap nasty little cartoon! Ignore the actors listed in the cast list - just because they managed to pay a few big names for a day and a half's voice work doesn't mean this film is any good. The plot is a reasonable attempt to draw as many films out of Rudolph as possible and, on paper, is a reasonable sting operation but the delivery is awful and ruins anything that might have been called potential.

The godawful songs are part of the problem - they seem to happen after every few lines of dialogue all the way through. It makes it impossible to bear - it really is awful stuff. The animation is also pretty bad. That might seem a bit unfair considering it looks OK and is computer animation, but it is the sort of animation you get in cut scenes on average games on your PC. The camera moves very slowly, the characters cannot move very fast and none of them are lip-synched at all!

The fancy voices do nothing at all to improve it. Dreyfuss does some rubbish Snowman narrator but Jamie Lee Curtis dons a horrible accent to do a hippo queen! (was she trying to hide her identity from shame?). Moranis has an OK character visually but he does nothing with it and the absurd songs and voice only serve to the character of any menace he had before he spoke.

Overall I can only advise that you do not make the mistake that I made by watching this. No matter how demanding your children get, don't use this film to placate them - making them sit facing the wall for an hour would be preferable.

I was not happy with the sequel, although I liked the concept of the movie I did not think it fit well as a sequel to the original. Rudolph and Clarice seem to have reversed the aging process by a few years, also the elf in charge who at the end of the original had a dental appointment with Hermy seems to have forgotten that and is mad and disappointed all over again. I feel the plot and story are fine I just don't think they should have tried to tie it to an almost forty year old classic.

Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and the Island of Misfit Toys. It's quite a mouthful of a title and the film is filled with completely crazy content, the "tooth mobile" a mobile dentist surgery. A talking kite, crazy villainous blimp and Jamie Lee Curtis voicing a Hippo Queen (she is one of the best bits of the film!)

The songs are ok for kids but don't hold a candle to the original and some of them are very slow paced, dull, and obvious filler. The animation is actually quite atrocious, even for 2001; but luckily very young children won't mind.

The toy taker is genuinely quite a good villain, his theme tune is top notch and Rick Moranis' voice acting helps a lot. His evil scheme is very simplistic and the plot overall is bad, but I liked how he flew round on this demonic fever dream type zeppelin airship, that looks like it's about to bomb whatever's underneath it.

5/10: Terrible animation, a generally bland plot (apart from the Toy Taker and Queen Camilla!) and childish songs. But, contains lots of kooky and crazy elements that do make it a fun watch.

I remember watching this when I was a young child, haven't watched it since. I didn't even think it was real.