EarDelightBase
Waste of Money.
WasAnnon
Slow pace in the most part of the movie.
Borserie
it is finally so absorbing because it plays like a lyrical road odyssey that’s also a detective story.
Mack Hawthorne
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.
loraleejessome
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!
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.
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).
