You know what I haven't done in a while? A "Technically" movie. I love doing these, because if I'm ever feeling burn-out or something, I can always rely on my old standard of "This technically counts". So, the AFI and BFI, those are the American and British Film Institutes, state that a film must be a minimum of forty minutes long to qualify as "Feature Length", so I have a stipulation that any movie that runs over forty minutes but is still under an hour falls under the category of "Technically", and boy was I excited to learn that this counted as a "Technically". I think most people who are in the animation or film review circles on the internet are aware of The Christmas Tree, one of the many animated products of the 1990s that somehow feels like a product of a much earlier time in animation. This movie has a reputation, and sometimes I love watching movies like that, because sometimes, you have to see a movie to really know how bad it actually is. Plan 9 From Outer Space? Not that bad. The Room? Pretty bad. Cat in the Hat? One of the best "So Bad It's Good" movies. Now, I get to scratch another one off my list, because at forty-two minutes, The Christmas Tree does qualify as "Feature Length".
This is one of those movies that I almost guarantee that most reviewers writing about it only sit through about the first ten minutes, because that is more time than you need to figure out every single issue with this movie, honestly the tricky part is where do I start because the problems become apparent with the title and opening credits. I don't normally comment on opening credits, because if you're watching a movie for the opening credits than you're watching it for the wrong reasons. However, I have to comment on this one because, like think of other Christmas specials and their opening credits, they have things like falling snow, winter landscapes, twinkling lights, maybe some cold blues or bright reds and greens. This movie just has a black background, and the music doesn't even have any kind of festive spirit to it, frankly I think that's just a bad omen, if your Christmas special doesn't even have the least bit of Christmas in its opening credits, than how's the rest of the movie going to fare?
Here's a criticism that I don't think anyone has brought up, this special feels like a Philips CD-i game, and I don't just means it looks like one, I mean genuinely it feels like a cheap, early 90s shovel-ware CD-ROM game, the editing, the voice acting, the audio editing, here's a tip for anyone who wants to get into audio editing, always have some kind of a gap between two pieces of recorded dialogue. Does that sound like something that everyone should know even if they're just an amateur screwing around in Audacity? Well, in many cases, you can hear instances where whoever was editing the audio just smashed two takes together without any kind of natural pause. And yeah, let's talk about that animation, because it really does look as cheap as it possibly could. Movement is limited and stilted, facial expressions are weird and uncanny, and lip syncing never matches the vocal track, not that that last point really matters since the voice acting is so awful, the kids are mumbling most of their words and the adults are putting zero enthusiasm into this.
I think the most frustrating thing about this is that the designs are not completely awful. All the kids look distinct from each other, Judy is a fine woman for the most part, and honestly, the backgrounds do look nice, they are the only thing I can look at and make the connection that this movie was made outside of the seventies. It does not convince me that this special wasn't originally meant to be an interactive storybook on CD-ROM though, because the story is undoubtedly the worst part of it all to me. Not the story itself, it's a pretty decent little short story that would make for a classic holiday special, but how the story is told. We get to the Christmas season at eleven minutes into the special and everything before that is just brought up and glossed over, like they want to establish these important plot details, but not actually spend any time to introduce them naturally. It really is just the cherry on top of this crap sundae, and I hate cherries.
I mean, what other rating can I give it except for "Avoid"? It is easily one of the worst animations I have ever seen, like what else is there? Friendship is Witchcraft? 12 oz. Mouse? That SpongeBob Episode where he adopts another pet that terrorizes Gary? Okay that last one may be worse, but this is still up there. It's just so incompetent, the editing, voice acting, animation, there is no quality to this product what-so-ever. One of my favourite critics, Todd in the Shadows, says "The worst is not always the most bad, sometimes it's the least good" and I can't think of anything that is "less good" than this. I almost want it to do something offensive, just to do something that will piss me off, but no, it's just really poorly made. I've seen some really poorly made movies, but I think this is the worst of them, The Misty Green Sky at least had something behind it, I could sense some kind of ambition to it. This has nothing, except the reputation, and I just can't recommend it on any level. This movie gets an avoid.
