Really Surprised!

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

Christmas Tree is about orphaned kids trying to save a tree while under the care of a ruthless and greedy caretaker. Acting - The worst group of acting of any animated movie PERIOD. The acting children are so inconsistent you wonder if they had drunk in the casting department. One sounds like they just learn how to talk, one kid sounds like they are from outer space, and one sounds like an adult. One kid you can barely understand. The actor of the father is the worst of the bunch. None of them show no emotion or effort except the caretaker Mrs. Mavilda can show too much emotion. Sometimes you wonder if they had a director since the direction is bad and lazy The animation is terrible and many of the aspects is terrible and can be quite creepy.

Okay, okay. This review may sound like everyone else, but I have the same opinion of this movie as they do. I was just exploring IMDb when I found "The Christmas Tree" and saw the rank. I didn't know why it was rated very low, so I had to check it out.Being that it is a 45 minute special and I was looking at this before dinner, I didn't want to watch the whole thing. I only watched the beginning up until they introduced Mrs. Hopewell. My first thoughts about this were: The narration sucks, and why did they name the tree Mrs. Hopewell? I decided to watch the Nostalgia Critic's review, which was almost as long as the whole thing, and that was probably because there are so many things wrong with it. Like I said, the narration was AWFUL, the animation is poor quality, the acting showed absolutely no emotion, the lip sync did not correspond with the dialogue, and one of the characters, Lily, sounded like she was drunk. Santa's voice, I thought, was demonic and sounded like as if the actor's voice was deepened. (I would say the same with another character whose voice was pitched) I highly recommend to watch it if you're looking for a laugh. Otherwise, STAY AWAY FROM IT.

Everything about this movie is just awful and on Christmas! The animation is stiff, no flexibility to make it look natural. The editing is sloppy and the voice acting and animation is just so terrible that it makes the Zelda CD-I cut scenes look like art form, and those cut scenes are terrible but at least they made the lips sync to the words unlike this movie. The music is just so bad that it sounds like someone was sleeping on the keyboard and think it's Mozart. A lot of people have said that this the animated version of 'The Room' and even though it is funny to laugh at because of how bad it can be, its problem that it's a Christmas movie and at that time of the year there are Christmas films that are bad but had some effort in them to make them good. But this has zero effort put towards its animation, acting, editing and story. The lips just don't sync well at all, there mouths just flap up and down and there eyes don't move at all and they just blink slowly, no fluid movement put into them at all to make them flexible. The editing is sloppy, there is a black fade at the start that finished a clip for about three seconds isn't a transitional fade not good enough for the people putting into their work? Plus the voice editing just skips at the end or goes immediately to the next line, no break whatsoever for the character. The voice acting is just unbelievably terrible! No emotion put towards that it that makes Kristin Stewart's acting from Twilight and the Snow White huntsman film more like Orson Welles, but we all know she's not a great actress but the voice acting of this poorly made film does, sorry to Orson Welles fans and I'm one of them. The message at the end is also poor as well 'You always win when you're good!' not all the time! As Doug Walker says 'Christmas is effort' a time of year where we look out for other who had a bad time on one of the greatest events of the year, effort into buying someone a gift that they want or didn't expect. Christmas is also a time to give presents to the poor, the people who can't afford for great Christmas presents. We give them our money no matter how much we have to give them stuff that they want for Christmas such as food, decorations and presents and we, the donates, expect nothing in return. It's also a time where war cease to be for the time being, good will towards men. This special didn't do any of that and that's where it seals to the word awful. This is a bad Christmas special and although it's funny like The Room, they should've at least TRY and PUT some EFFORT into this film.

In The Christmas Tree, a family moves into a town and the wife named Judy and her two children are offered to stay at an orphanage where Judy will work as an assistant for Mrs Mavilda. Unlike Mrs Mavilda, who is strict, cruel and keeps donation money for herself, Judy is kind and caring and gets a lot of respect from the orphans. Mrs Mavilda feels that Judy is getting too much respect and hatches a plan to get rid of her and the children decide to get help from Santa Claus.The tree the title refers to is a pine tree named Mrs Hopewell but she is hardly involved in the plot as she is used a few times at the beginning but she doesn't become important until near the end.The voice acting for the film is extremely wooden, especially the acting from the child actors as the children. It makes you wonder if they actually auditioned or if they only got the parts because they may have been the crews children. The voice acting from the adult characters is just as bad, particularly Judy's husband who sounds very monotone.The animation is lazy and hardly anything moves. In most cases when a character is speaking, the only moving body parts are their lips and their blinking eyes. Little effort was put into the mouth movement as they usually do not match what the characters are saying. In fact, the first time I saw this, I thought it was a dub. The majority of the characters have the exact same faces and it is pretty creepy when they smile.Despite being marketed as a Christmas special, Christmas is hardly ever mentioned at all. The movie also has a moral at the end where Mrs Mavilda becomes nice and learns that "you always win when you're good." Instead of getting punished for her mistreatment of the orphans, she goes back to working at the orphanage as an assistant. This is a horrible moral as being good does not automatically pardon terrible things someone may have done in the past. Instead, the moral should have been about why Christmas is one of the happiest times of the year and the fact that it is better to give than to receive.Overall, this is definitely one of the worst holiday specials of all time and I do not recommend it for anyone.