Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer & the Island of Misfit Toys

You could tell this movie had it's heart in the right place, but just about everything else tells you this movie was slapped together without regard for visual appeal or even a good message for kids.

If you listen to the "director's commentary" (you'd think it would be a director's track, but instead it's only a 3-minute interview), they explain how this is the first time anyone on the team had done a computer-animated cartoon before, especially the B-movie director. And while this may have been cute as a bunch of student projects tied together, the whole mess just doesn't belong.

Can't be called a sequel if it has nothing to do with the first, can it?

In the last couple of years there has been a marketing bonanza on the original Rudolph the Red nose Reindeer. You can buy just about anything from the original at Christmas time (Action Figures, plush toys, Bobbleheads, Ornaments, Wrapping Paper, Tree Skirts, Magnets, etc.).

This movie just came out so that the makers could get more money off the Rudolph frenzy.

First, I would say the worst thing about this movie was the soundtrack. They were all new songs and they were all terrible. I just looked at my wife and we were both cringing. I didn't even feel like a majority of the songs were even christmasy just stupid buddy songs. Maybe I am missing something maybe they made this movie for kids because the music was like something out of a Barney episode. Terrible!

The Animation was not the same as the first. The first was puppet. This one was a rehashed computer animated flick. And the computer animation was some of the poorest computer animation I have seen.

The characters in this movie were the same as from the last Rudolph but for some reason I found them annoying in this movie as opposed to cute in the first one. There were three new characters and they were not interesting or likable. You can tell that whoever made this movie did not get what the other christmas specials were all about. A talking annoying Hippo? In the North Pole? Let me ask you does that sound like something you would see in the first movie? The makers of this just wanted to make a few bucks and do no research. Everyone of the christmas specials had a narrator. The narrator would be an animated version of the person who is providing the voice: Burl Ives as the snowman in the first Rudolph, Fred Astaire in Santa Claus is Coming to Town, Jimmy Duartee in the first Frosty, Andy Griffith in the second Frosty, others include Ethel Merman, Shirley Booth, and Red Skelton. But for this one Richard Dryfus was just a boring snowman. The snowman looked nothing like Richard. This seems minor but just goes to show that there really is no similarity to the originals except that rights to the characters were purchased by the makers of this film. The story line is not in the same vain at all.

All in all pretty poor. If you must see this do not buy it like I did. Wait for it to come on tv or if you must, rent it.

I better recommendation would be to watch little known sequels: Rudolph's Shiny New Year or Rudolph and Frosty's Christmas in July.

My 2-year-old is watching it at the moment in the other room -- and it's September.

The lyrics to the songs are complex to the point that I wonder how the actors got through them without switching to their normal voices, but I thought they were quite good, despite that.

The animation is not up to Shrek's standards, but would we want it to be? Photo-realistic animation would just detract from the story. As it is, the animation reminds me enough of the original stop-motion so that this indeed feels like a sequel.

The voice acting is marvelous: Rudolph and Hermey sound like they did in the original, and the other actors drop neatly into place around them.

As commented earlier, this takes the characters forward, instead of just repeating the identical behaviors in a different plot.

So, see it. You may find it a waste of time, but it's very much a mileage-may-vary thing, rather than a this-is-a-waste-of-celluloid thing.

take over the animation house, this is what one can expect. I'm embarrassed to say that I was in a hurry and picked this up thinking it was the original 1964 Rudolph. I had thought that the cover had changed and there were now "special features" on it. This is nothing like the original. It is actually a pointless little bit of fluff.

Six years after Toy Story turned the animation world upside down, this movie fails to live up to that standard, even though the animation isn't terrible. You have to be looking for faults to notice them, and some critics simply made up complaints ... such as a critic who claimed the characters had no shadows. Completely untrue.

The look of these animated characters is very, VERY like the look of the models in the 1964 original, and that's a positive touch all in itself. They also sound very similar, and a few sound identical.

The musical numbers don't match up to the original, but the story is okay, if it drags a bit. It probably would have been better slotted for a one hour time slot, which would have tightened this up considerably.

It's worth a forgiving look by fans of the original, and it's certainly okay for kids anyway. We won't be watching it a second time, but I'm not sorry I saw it.