During the holiday season, one of my absolute favorite ways to celebrate is by watching all kinds of Christmas movies. They always have the right amount of holiday spirit and cheer to really get you in the mood of the season.
Well... some of them do, at least.
Most holiday specials have a lot of love and care put into them — or at the very least, a minimal amount of effort. With these three holiday specials I am about to show you, something about the "love and care" requirement must have been lost in translation, because they have anything but care put into them. Continue at your own risk.
1. Felix the Cat Saves Christmas
While not the phenomenon Mickey Mouse would become, Felix the Cat is an important and still fairly well-known part of animation history. However, this special shows that he really needs to stay in the 1920s where he belongs and — most importantly — where he cannot speak. This special does not seem to terrible at first glance. The story is basic Christmas fare, with Felix and his scientist buddy Poindexter journeying to Santa Claus to aid him during a huge blizzard caused by the evil Professor. However, the execution of what should be a decent story is terrible.
My biggest gripe is that the special is just way too slow. The dialogue is very stilted, like the actors are trying to put emphasis on each word. Literally half the movie is just filler, trying to squeeze in as many pointless slapstick routines and musical numbers as they can. And — I cannot believe I am the person to say this — the special relies way too much on puns. Seriously. They do not even try and deliver them subtlety; there is a rimshot sound effect after each one. I know it is a children's film, but children do not need to have everything spelled out for them like that. Also the art direction can go from passable to terrible in a single scene.
The 20s are done, guys. We want to make our designs a little less flat.
2. The Christmas Tree
I gave "Felix" a little flack for having bad animation and bad voice delivery, but honestly, you will see that it only gets worse from there. In the case of "The Christmas Tree," the latter is especially obvious. In this special, a mother named Judy and her two children go to work at an orphanage run by the evil Mrs. Mavilda, who treats the orphans there terribly. In fact, the only friends the orphans have is a pine tree they named Mrs. Hopewell, the titular Christmas tree. There is also a frame-up plot and a quest for Santa and all that, but it is honestly not as exciting as it sounds.
I want to say this is a little better than "Felix Saves Christmas" because this one is shorter and does not have any pointless songs, but really, the faults of "The Christmas Tree" are a lot worse than "Felix." The animation in "The Christmas Tree" is even worse than "Felix," sometimes consisting of nothing but still shots with blinking eyes for long periods of time.
Also the voice acting is just horrible. Every single person in the film puts absolutely no effort into making their performances sound believable, either sounding bored or just plain emotionless. Mrs. Mavilda has the exact opposite problem, putting way too much emotion into her lines and making them way too loud and overdramatic. And some of the voices come from the wrong characters. The plot is okay, but its moral at the end is so phoned-in and forced, you can tell they only added it to try and get some substance out of this mess.
3. Rapsittie Kids: Believe in Santa
This last special is the cream of the crop when it comes to terrible Christmas specials, and I think this one screenshot can say why better than I can.
This is from 2002 by the way. You know, in-between when CGI movies like "Monster's Inc" and "Finding Nemo" came out. Yeah. The plot is terribly disjointed and confusing, something about how the main character, Ricky, wants to give a typical rich spoiled girl Nicole a teddy bear? But she does not appreciate it? And somehow she learns the true meaning of Christmas because of it? Honestly, I have seen this special multiple times but I still do not totally understand it. To be fair to me, the godawful visuals and obnoxious songs are super distracting. Really the only thing going for this special is that the voice acting is actually pretty good. And you want to know why?
That's right - somehow, this special got big name stars like Jodi Benson, Grey Delisle, Paige O'Hara, and Mark Hamill to do this. They also have Walter Jones, the original black Power Ranger. As a Power Rangers fan, that's downright disheartening. I do not know how they got all of those actors to do this, but even they do not save it.
So those are the three most terrible Christmas specials, at least that I have seen. Getting through these are super exhausting, but trust me when I say watching them with friends is one of the most fun things I can think of. There is nothing like shared dislike to bring people together!
