Reviews

Just Awful. Terrible story, horrible CGI and an overuse of it, and bad acting from people I know can act. I always make sure to give every movie I pay for a chance, and thus will always see it through to the end, but I really wish I'd walked out and demanded my money back. It was like someone vomited in my eyes.

Chuck Jones is possibly the greatest animation director that ever lived, for this he doesn't direct, but instead tried his hand at writing with mixed results. The story isn't bad overall, but as a whole the execution just isn't there. The music and voice acting is great, can't go wrong with Judy Garland, and the backgrounds are absolutely gorgeous, just phenomenal to look at. The character design isn't bad, very Chuck Jonesy in design, but the animation isn't great, it just doesn't fit with the elaborate backgrounds. UPA was known for their limited animation, and they didn't bother to up their effort much for a feature. The characters seem to hover over the ground when they walk, there's just no feeling of weight to them, they have no depth or texture and they cast no shadows. It's the equivalent of cutting out a character from a coloring book and pasting it over a Monet painting. If you're a fan of classic film it's worth a watch but I doubt the modern child would even make it past the opening credits.

I had no expectations when I decided to finally sit down and watch this. All I had heard was how terrible it was. But, I was actually pretty entertained. At no point did I groan or wish I wasn't watching it. I got to see some of my favorite comic characters portrayed pretty well on screen by great actors. Could the story be better? Of course! But overall it was a fun, short, little flick that I'm not mad I watched.

This movie is fantastic! The story is great, the voice acting is superb, but most importantly we get to see what amazing things you can still do with hand drawn animation in the era of cgi. Using computer lighting techniques over traditional animation is a brilliant way to win over the Pixar or nothing crowd by blending traditional animation with modern computer wizardry. But most importantly it's hand drawn... by actual human hands... the way the nine old men would have done it! You get that personal touch that you only get when someone is actually producing artwork and not just connecting vector dots on a computer screen. It's a special kind of warm fuzzy magic that just isn't common place in American animated films anymore. Of course this film isn't American, Sergio Pablos took what he learned working on films like Hercules and The Hunchback of Notre Dame and created his own studio in Spain to create this masterpiece. This film is a Christmas classic, a great Santa origin story, but it's much more than that, it's a true marvel of modern artistry seemlesly blending the old with the new to create something incredible.

This movie is basically A Christmas Story for people that grew up in the 80's and that's not a bad thing. It's a lot of fun with good acting and a good Christmas message. For the people that pointed out historical inaccuracies, they obviously missed the part where the narrator explained he couldn't remember exactly what year it was and he would routinely embellish parts of the story as he was telling it to his daughter. I think that gave the film makers a bit more freedom and that's perfectly fine. Definitely check this one out with the family, it's worth a watch.

I'm the type that gives anything a chance. I actually enjoyed Jellystone, yes the character designs were different but it worked and it didn't take anything away from the originals. This show however is horrible just based on the animation alone. I generally don't want to review something unless I've seen all of it, but my brain could only make it through 1 1/4 episodes. The stories could be groundbreaking, but I'll never know because the animation is so jumpy and stilted my eyes and brain strained trying to process it. The best I can tell is that they were working with maybe 8 to 10 frames per second rather than the standard 15 to 24. I've seen cheap amateur YouTube animations with better production value. Skip this unless you like migraines.