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

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.

The 1964 film is a timeless Christmas classic, something that the whole family can watch again and again and find something new every time. Beautiful to look at, with lovely music, a terrific voice cast and an engaging story and characters, it enthralled with me ever since I was little(I am 17 now)and I still love it now. I did think the 1998 movie was sweet and above average, but it isn't as good as the 1964 version. However, this movie perceived as a sequel to the 1964 film is a bit of a mess. It has its heart in the right place and has an interesting premise, but in terms of execution it was ultimately disappointing.

Let's start with the few pros this movie had. It does mean well, and not completely heartless. It could very well be a decent movie for kids, if not for adults. I admit it, I liked this movie as a kid, but things have changed since. I really liked the idea of the story, about a Toy Taker taking toys and trying to spoil Christmas, and Rudolph trying to save the day. The incidental music was decent, if not particularly memorable.

Unfortunately, as much as I wanted to like this movie, everything else ranged to poor to absolutely horrible. While I liked the idea of the story, it was executed horribly. It took a long time to get going, and there are parts in the middle half where next to nothing happens. Need I say that there are a lot of disconnected scenes that are seemingly irrelevant to the plot? Also there doesn't seem to be any connection to the 1964 movie other than the characters' names. The dialogue wasn't any better, a vast majority of it was most uninspiring and entirely forgettable. And there are more clichés in the script alone than you can count.

Another con was the animation. I just want to say that I don't think the computer animation is quite as bad as it was in Doogal, which for me is an absolute disgrace of an animated film anyway, despite the exceptional cast. However, that isn't saying much. The character movement is very robotic, the camera work is disappointingly slow and the actual colours are extremely flat and dull. But I am in complete agreement with anybody who says the worst part was the songs. Almost all of them were absolutely horrible. Some truly plodding and unmemorable melodies and truly crass lyrics. The only song I came close to liking was the Toy Taker's song; then again I tend to root for the villain's songs in movies.

And what have I forgotten? Ah, yes the voice cast. Seriously there are some truly talented actors here, however they just couldn't do anything with the material they were given. I like Richard Dreyfuss, but his snowman narrator, in comparison to the brilliant Burl Ives who voiced him so wonderfully in the 1964 film, was boring and not benevolent enough. Kathaleen Barr as Rudolph... she is a talented voice actress, and acquitted herself well as the voice of Rudolph in the 1998 movie. But I felt as though it wasn't Kathaleen Barr here, her voice was I don't know... too bolshy here. And while I found Rudolph caring and genuinely cute in the 1964 and 1998 films, I am really sorry but I didn't care for him here. Jamie Lee Curtis; now she deserved better. Bad material and a close-to-embarrassing accent just doesn't cut it Jamie Lee. Garry Chalk does his best, but his Santa wasn't merry or cheery enough, John Goodman voiced him marvellously in the 1998 film. And then Rick Moranis, talk about disappointment. The Toy Taker was merely an okay villain, and great to look at. But vocally Moranis couldn't do anything at all with the character, and there wasn't enough of the character to fully develop properly.

All in all, despite some redeeming qualities, this was really disappointing, with a very predictable ending might I add? See the 1964 cartoon instead, and you may like the 1998 film. By all means, see this movie if you like it, but I think those who didn't like this movie are fans of the 1964 cartoon and was expecting something new. Sadly that didn't happen. 4/10 Bethany Cox

Six years after Toy Story turned the animation world upside down, this movie fails to live up to that standard, even though the animation isn't terrible. You have to be looking for faults to notice them, and some critics simply made up complaints ... such as a critic who claimed the characters had no shadows. Completely untrue.

The look of these animated characters is very, VERY like the look of the models in the 1964 original, and that's a positive touch all in itself. They also sound very similar, and a few sound identical.

The musical numbers don't match up to the original, but the story is okay, if it drags a bit. It probably would have been better slotted for a one hour time slot, which would have tightened this up considerably.

It's worth a forgiving look by fans of the original, and it's certainly okay for kids anyway. We won't be watching it a second time, but I'm not sorry I saw it.

In the last couple of years there has been a marketing bonanza on the original Rudolph the Red nose Reindeer. You can buy just about anything from the original at Christmas time (Action Figures, plush toys, Bobbleheads, Ornaments, Wrapping Paper, Tree Skirts, Magnets, etc.).

This movie just came out so that the makers could get more money off the Rudolph frenzy.

First, I would say the worst thing about this movie was the soundtrack. They were all new songs and they were all terrible. I just looked at my wife and we were both cringing. I didn't even feel like a majority of the songs were even christmasy just stupid buddy songs. Maybe I am missing something maybe they made this movie for kids because the music was like something out of a Barney episode. Terrible!

The Animation was not the same as the first. The first was puppet. This one was a rehashed computer animated flick. And the computer animation was some of the poorest computer animation I have seen.

The characters in this movie were the same as from the last Rudolph but for some reason I found them annoying in this movie as opposed to cute in the first one. There were three new characters and they were not interesting or likable. You can tell that whoever made this movie did not get what the other christmas specials were all about. A talking annoying Hippo? In the North Pole? Let me ask you does that sound like something you would see in the first movie? The makers of this just wanted to make a few bucks and do no research. Everyone of the christmas specials had a narrator. The narrator would be an animated version of the person who is providing the voice: Burl Ives as the snowman in the first Rudolph, Fred Astaire in Santa Claus is Coming to Town, Jimmy Duartee in the first Frosty, Andy Griffith in the second Frosty, others include Ethel Merman, Shirley Booth, and Red Skelton. But for this one Richard Dryfus was just a boring snowman. The snowman looked nothing like Richard. This seems minor but just goes to show that there really is no similarity to the originals except that rights to the characters were purchased by the makers of this film. The story line is not in the same vain at all.

All in all pretty poor. If you must see this do not buy it like I did. Wait for it to come on tv or if you must, rent it.

I better recommendation would be to watch little known sequels: Rudolph's Shiny New Year or Rudolph and Frosty's Christmas in July.

My 2-year-old is watching it at the moment in the other room -- and it's September.

The lyrics to the songs are complex to the point that I wonder how the actors got through them without switching to their normal voices, but I thought they were quite good, despite that.

The animation is not up to Shrek's standards, but would we want it to be? Photo-realistic animation would just detract from the story. As it is, the animation reminds me enough of the original stop-motion so that this indeed feels like a sequel.

The voice acting is marvelous: Rudolph and Hermey sound like they did in the original, and the other actors drop neatly into place around them.

As commented earlier, this takes the characters forward, instead of just repeating the identical behaviors in a different plot.

So, see it. You may find it a waste of time, but it's very much a mileage-may-vary thing, rather than a this-is-a-waste-of-celluloid thing.