The Christmas Tree

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!

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.

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.