The Christmas Tree

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.

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.

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).

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!

Never watching this thing again. Absolute garbage. This thing was so cheaply made that it's mainly just a slideshow of bad drawings with a narrator talking in the background. The voice acting was terrible. One of the kids was actually impossible to understand, because they evidently just recorded a little girl blabbering on about who knows what.

The adult actors are terrible as well. Their voice acting shows a severe lack of emotion. In one scene, a child goes missing, and when said child's mother finds out, her tone of voice says "Oh well. Could have been worse"

And the plot... let's not go there.