Recess Christmas: Miracle on Third Street

I love the Recess show, it was one of my favourite shows as a young girl and at 20 I still have a soft spot for it. As far as the Recess movies go, Recess Christmas: Miracle on 3rd Street is better than Taking the Fifth Grade but for me the best of the Recess movies is School's Out. Recess Christmas is entertaining enough, but it is far from perfect. There is little story to speak of, most of it reads too much of a clips show, which is what I mean when I say that you are likely to question the point of the movie. The animation in the (rather brief) links with Principal Prickley, Miss Finster and Miss Groatkey is very basic and nowhere near as colourful or appealing, and I don't think these parts are anywhere near as well written as the episodes featured. However, the episodes featured in Recess Christmas are hugely entertaining, Weekend at Muriel's and the Christmas special Yes Mikey, Santa Does Shave are the best stories. The episodes are beautifully animated, complete with memorable music, witty writing and imaginative storytelling. All the characters are fun and true to character, and the voice acting is top notch(of the direct-to-video Recess movies it is here where TJ is the best-voiced). All in all, doesn't have much a point to it but I was still entertained by it. 6/10 Bethany Cox

Recess Christmas: Miracle on Third Street is a clips show. Its 65 minutes consist of a small amount of new footage (Miss Grotke, Miss Finster, and Principal Prickly driving home from school in a blizzard) combined with excerpts from "Principal For a Day," "The Great Can Drive," "Weekend at Muriel's," and "Yes, Mikey, Santa, Does Shave." Prospective viewers should know this before renting or purchasing this film.

This is just a compilation of previous Recess episodes. Sure there is a "story" going on here, but it is just an excuse to recap a bunch of previous Recess episodes and call it a full length "movie."

I would say skip this if you have seen the series already because you are just watching a handful of episodes edited together, with breaks in between involving the teachers stuck in a snowstorm.

Overall though, if you have not seen all the Recess episodes or if you want to put in something that plays in the background during a Christmas party, you can do a lot worst than this. This is just "okay," as a compilation.

5/10.

...actually, he said is was worse than awful. This bright eight year old said that he had never rented such a terrible movie. The worse thing about it was that he only laughed on time. You might want to pass on this one.

I just watched this Recess Christmas video a few hours, originally not sure of what was to be on the tape. I love the show and watch it regularly, but I hated "Recess: School's Out", which I think should be avoided by anyone except little children. If you like the TV show, I can't see any reason why you won't like this featue, as it IS the TV show. This tape is more or less a compilation edition, consisting of four cartoons from the show, and a few minutes in between the 'toons, just to tie the whole thing together.

Basically, if you've seen all the episodes thus far (like me), then you've already seen most of this film, but how's it gonna hurt to see a couple of the cartoons again?