MamaGravity good back-story, and good acting

Intcatinfo A Masterpiece!

Aneesa Wardle The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Ella-May O'Brien Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Horst in Translation (filmreviews@web.de) 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.

DarthRater Saw this when it was on USA Network years ago, and now my kid watches the DVD and loves dancing around to the music. It's a cute little show that young kids can enjoy. Adults and older kids might prefer the standard 'Peanuts Specials' since this one is comparatively a bit rougher and over-narrated. The story itself is non-traditional, but it is a nice change from the same old archaic stories of reindeer with light-up noses and talking blobs of snow our grandparents grew up with. Apparently there were some former artists from Hanna-Barbera and/or Disney working on it, and it has played all over the world in multiple languages since its release decades ago. So, while it hasn't become a classic locally, there must be a following out there somewhere.

Stompgal_87 I watched this special in full after having watched the Nostalgia Critic's review and while he panned its animation style, editing and voice acting, I have similar views on these aspects.The animation is wobbly, especially when the characters speak, and inconsistent, especially when most of the children applaud as they see Mrs Mavilda release their dog from the window but one of them looks as if he is oddly nodding his head. The lip-sync could have done with some additional mouth shapes (such as the one for 'L') since it seemed out of place a lot of the time. While the opening shot of the storybook underneath the tree is colourful, the colours fall flat for the rest of the special and are often pale but I do like how Lily is dressed (blue dress over lilac top) to complement her blonde hair. While I'm on the subject of Lily, I couldn't understand what she was saying half the time and towards the end she is shown amongst the rest of the children when she was supposed to have fallen down a cliff. The characters were drawn in a borderline cute and ugly style but the backgrounds are detailed.The best aspect of this film is the story, which carries the original idea of children making hopes and wishes to an outdoor Christmas tree, cleverly named Mrs. Hopewell. It does have its flaws such as shots of Mrs. Mavilda's gambling being intercut with Judy telling the children about Christmas and Mrs. Mavilda getting struck by lightning when trying to cut down Mrs. Hopewell. Why did that happen? I didn't get it...Moving onto the music, a lot of it is electronically synthesised , thus taking away any meaning of the festive story. Further to Lily's voice being hard to decipher, a lot of the voice acting was monotonous, especially Judy, but the script was as decent as the story.Overall this is the weakest animated Christmas special I have seen so far but it is not as bad as the other reviewers thought it was. 6/10.

mercuryix2003 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).