Bardlerx Strictly average movie

ThedevilChoose When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

Micah Lloyd Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

Ezmae Chang This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Christmas-Reviewer The program is set in the fictional town of Junctionville, New York around the turn of the 20th century. Santa Claus is offended by an anonymous letter printed in the town's newspaper (and signed "all of us") claiming that he doesn't exist. In response, Santa returns the entire town's letters to them unopened. Upon reading the anonymous letter printed in the newspaper, Father Mouse — a mouse assistant to the human clock maker Joshua Trundle — immediately suspects that his brainy son Albert is its author. Albert confirms his suspicions, repeating the letter verbatim to him.Father Mouse and the Trundle Family devise a plan to appease Santa by building a singing clock tower for him, built with a special recording to play a song to coax him not to by Junctionville on Christmas Eve. Unfortunately, Albert enters the clock to explore it without permission, and inadvertently causes it to malfunction in front of the whole town, seriously damaging Trundle's professional reputation. Furthermore, the Mayor, publicly embarrassed at the clock tower's failure, refuses to give the Joshua access to it for repairs.Confessing his mistake, Albert volunteers to repair it himself and Father Mouse tells Joshua of the situation before waiting at his bed with worry on Christmas Eve. Although Albert does not complete his task until about one minute after the midnight deadline, the clock does play its song within earshot of Santa which convinces him to turn around and come to town after all.I just watched this again for the first time in 30 years. Funny thing is I most of this cartoon. Its not one of my favorites but its still enjoyable. I will watch it again. The best audience for this film is most likely small children but if you are a good parent you will watch this with them.

Michael_Elliott 'Twas the Night Before Christmas (1974) ** 1/2 (out of 4) A small town learns that Santa isn't coming because a know-it-all mouse wrote him an insulting letter telling him that he wasn't real. The people of this town must try and find a way for Santa to change his mind while the trouble maker's father teaches him a lesson on why even if you don't believe you shouldn't ruin the fun for everyone else. This is yet another charming short from the Bass-Rankin team who were masters at bringing this Christmas tales to television. This one here certainly isn't one of my favorites but there are enough nice characters to make it worth watching. The animation here is quite crude but I think this works in the film's favor and it certainly helps bring the mice to life. I thought the father-son mice were very good and their story was certainly the most entertaining thing here. The human characters weren't nearly as interesting but we are treated to a couple nice tunes and there's no question that the message is a good one and it gets across very nicely.

saffym This has got to be one of the most underrated, under-appreciated Christmas specials out there. Granted, the animation isn't fantastic, but the story and songs more than make up for that. I watch it every year and the songs "Give Your Heart a Try" and "Even a Miracle Needs a Hand" still make me tear up when I hear them. It's a simple message of following your heart instead of your head even when you should know better. It's not as well-known as Frosty or Rudolph (both of which I love, by the way), but given the choice among the three I'd watch "Twas the Night Before Christmas" every time. A great special not only for kids but for adults who want to feel like kids for 25 minutes or so.

F Gwynplaine MacIntyre UPDATE: Gentle readers, do not be fooled by the fact that this IMDb review has received so many negative (un-"useful" votes). ALL of those votes were cast by the same person, a very sad individual with too much free time on his hands ... who sends me emails at regular intervals, demanding that I change this review to make it more favourable. Now, here's my review:Oh, what a piece of crap is this. Why do American television companies see Christmas as an opportunity to produce so many crap-awful specials? In Britain, Christmas is just an opportunity for the TV stations to show a James Bond movie.I ought to have been warned off watching "'Twas the Night Before Christmas" when I saw that it was produced by Rankin/Bass, a production company that has churned out far too much unwatchable rubbish. But I'm a great fan of Tammy Grimes and Joel Grey, and John McGiver is very high on my list of all-time favourite character actors, so I sought out this animated film when I saw that they were listed in the cast.This story is awful. It's intended for kids, but kids deserve something better than this. The animation is terrible: far below Rankin/Bass's usual wretched standard. Joel Grey and Tammy Grimes are wasted in badly-written roles. Tammy Grimes was a very sexy actress with a very distinctive voice (and a cod accent), so it's disturbing to hear her voice issuing from the badly-animated mouth of a badly-drawn MALE character.Worst of all is the character written for poor John McGiver. He plays a blowhard mayor, and the scriptwriter has given McGiver a terrible gimmick which is difficult to perform and not funny at all. Every single time McGiver speaks, his character launches into a bombastic speech with lots of long complicated esoteric sesquipedalian words, but invariably he gives up the struggle halfway through the sentence, says 'Aw, heck!' and then uses plain speaking to say what he'd meant to say in the first place. I always considered McGiver a brilliant actor, but he can't transcend this terrible running gag which isn't funny.I give somebody some credit for casting George Gobel in the lead role of a mouse. Gobel was a very self-effacing actor who deserved to be better known, and who was (elsewhere, not here) extremely funny in a soft-spoken and low-key way. His established persona fits perfectly with the mouse character he plays here. Too bad it's so terribly written.This cartoon is ostensibly based on the famous poem "A Visit from St Nicholas", known incorrectly as "'Twas the Night Before Christmas" and traditionally credited to Clement Moore ... but the link is very tenuous indeed. (The poem mentions a mouse, and this cartoon is full of talking mice.) On top of everything else, we now have solid evidence that Clement Moore stole the credit for this poem, which was originally published anonymously. In the year 2001, a letter surfaced which Moore wrote to the editors of the newspaper that originally published this poem, asking whether any of the editors knew the name of the poem's author. When they replied that they did not, Moore waited until the death of the poem's true author, and then he took credit. None of Clement Moore's own poems show even a glimmer of the talent present in "'Twas the Night Before Christmas" ... by which I mean the poem, not this terrible animated cartoon. There is substantial forensic evidence that the true author of this beloved poem was Major Henry Livingston, Jnr, scion of a patriotic family that helped finance the American Revolution.Parents, let your kids do anything at all on Christmas rather than letting them watch this horrible cartoon. It will turn their brains into figgy pudding. I'll rate "'Twas the Night Before Christmas" zero points out of 10. Bah, humbug!