The Christmas Tree (1991)

Too many fans seem to be blown away

Good concept, poorly executed.

Boring, over-political, tech fuzed mess

Blistering performances.

I don't even know how to explain it.The voice acting is awful. The animation is hardly pretty to look at. The story is a garbled mess. But I still can't help but salvage something from this. Maybe it's just the natural Christmas appeal. Maybe it's just me imagining something better in the core of my mind. Maybe it's just the kid named, "Pappy" (the name makes me very happy for some reason). But... I feel a sort of magic from this. Like there is something wonderful even in the core of things like this. The best example I can think of is looking at the smiles of the children in a stop frame (not counting the orphans' first smiles towards the new children - that is memorable for a reason). There seems to be so much happiness in them, somehow. It's not really enough reason to call it a good movie, of course. I still watch it every year mostly because of how bad it can be. But it has a magic in it that earned it a spot in my Christmas movies pile. That alone says something, at least to me.

These are the last words of this 43-minute animated Christmas movie from almost 25 years ago. Sadly, this means that this film does not win as it's not good for the most part. However, i also do not think it's a complete failure. The animation is mostly solid and I like the traditional style. It looks a lot older than 1991. Unfortunately, the characters' movements look a little abrupt at times, almost robot-like, and the females have lips that look like they are full of Botox.It probably shows occasionally that Ferreira never directed another movie and Christianson never wrote another. But this can also be used as a bit of an apology. Brazilian animated films are frequently pretty bad copycats of the American original and this one here is mediocre at best, even without an American original. The story is a bit weird, but I found the nasty orphanage witch's gambling problem sort of funny. Her change of character at the end (bad towards good) wasn't particularly credible though and there are more flaws with this film in terms of the script, for example the random appearance of the mayor in the end. The voice acting is so-so. The witch's voice actress was probably the best, but the other ones struggled quite a bit. All in all, not a terrible watch, but not a good one either and you really shouldn't see this movie outside the holidays.

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!

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.