Stometer Save your money for something good and enjoyable

BroadcastChic Excellent, a Must See

Kimball Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Yazmin Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

rileyspencer-97 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.

DarthRater Saw this when it was on USA Network years ago, and now my kid watches the DVD and loves dancing around to the music. It's a cute little show that young kids can enjoy. Adults and older kids might prefer the standard 'Peanuts Specials' since this one is comparatively a bit rougher and over-narrated. The story itself is non-traditional, but it is a nice change from the same old archaic stories of reindeer with light-up noses and talking blobs of snow our grandparents grew up with. Apparently there were some former artists from Hanna-Barbera and/or Disney working on it, and it has played all over the world in multiple languages since its release decades ago. So, while it hasn't become a classic locally, there must be a following out there somewhere.

nightlight1991 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.

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).