While binge watching and reviewing bad Christmas movies this December, I vaguely remembered watching this one a few years ago out of morbid fascination. This wasn't even a full-length movie. It's just 22 minutes of low-quality computer animated garbage that looked as though it were made by a class of middle-schoolers who somehow got their hands on computer animation technology.
Santa Claus is facing toy production troubles at the North Pole. His most brilliant elf, Burton, invents a machine to solve this problem. Unfortunately, the machine goes haywire and transforms Burton into an evil snowman, who promptly creates a huge blizzard that threatens Christmas. What follows is a bitter battle between Santa and the Snowman until a girl named Jennifer intervenes and resurrects Burton by singing a song about the "Christmas Light". That's it.
I know this was made in 1995 when computer animated media was just entering the entertainment industry, but even for that time period, the animation was horrible. By comparison, the earliest episodes of ReBoot, Beast Wars, and VeggieTales were head and shoulders above this trash and whoever said this was as good as Toy Story was lying through their teeth. All of the scenery was barren and plain looking. The North Pole itself looks more like a prison complex than a toy factory. The character designs look like lumpy clay figures with scrawny noodle arms that were created in a kindergarten art class, and their movements were sluggish and jerky. Everything in this movie feels so soulless and boring, it'll make you yawn.
The voice acting is terrible, and this was the only role nearly all of the so-called "actors" ever got. Isaac and Santa Claus both sound half-asleep as they muttered their lines in monotones, even when they're in danger. Burton/Snowman was only a little better with his hammy villain shtick. The only half-decent voice acting comes from Dan Haggerty (RIP) as the narrator and Jennifers singing.
None of the characters are interesting or likeable. Santa himself is a complete jerk who, along with Isaac, mistreats Burton, kidnaps Jennifer, and even tries to kill Burton after he becomes the Snowman. What kind of crummy Christmas movie would have such an uncharacteristically nasty Santa and expect kids to enjoy it?
In the end, this was a disaster that failed everywhere Toy Story succeeded. Everything here was awful. What was the purpose of this anyway? I pity any kid unfortunate enough to have watched this, the first and one of the worst, computer animated Christmas movies ever created.
