Topolino - Strepitoso Natale

This isn't your father's Disney. The original Disney franchise players now reside in the Land Where Everyone is Nice, preschool toons rendered in kiddie-grade Pixarish 3D. Mickey always was a little wimpy but even Donald has been completely Dippified with the Evil Daisy Duck browbeating him at every opportunity. He was a WWII hero for chrissakes, selling War Bonds to defeat the Nazis! Goofy has become a caricature of himself and his goofiness has been choreographed to a perfect death, Huey Dewey & Louie can't stay conniving for more than 30 seconds without guilt spoiling it all, while Pluto would be better off on Animal Control's 3 Day Plan. Its not pretty, what they've done to these old Toons.

The only way to reclaim my interest after this would be Donald doing his popular 'Who's Your Daddy?' with Daisy sparking his enthusiasm. I'd like to see someone with a duckbill pull that off They could've made it an Easter egg, being ducks after all. I can give this one a 7 because kids like it. They don't know any better.

Christmas is my favourite holiday ever, mostly for nostalgic reasons, and I decided to check out this film because I love Christmas movies(Miracle on 34th Street, Its a Wonderful Life, Scrooge, Muppet Christmas Carol) and I loved Mickey's Once Upon a Christmas. And while this is hardly the best Christmas movie, it is a heart-warming and touching one. I was pleasantly surprised.

The animation is surprisingly effective, I was skeptical of it being in CGI but the characters actually do not look robotic and the colours and backgrounds are exquisite. The music is wonderful too, hearing songs and music like that always make me feel warm and tingly inside particularly in the Christmas season. The dialogue isn't cloying, in fact it is funny and touching, and I loved the stories. The first one, the one with Huey, Duey and Louie and the last one are the best, the latter being the most touching. In fact the only story that didn't quite work for me was the one with Donald losing his Christmas spirit and cares, the change to Donald's character was rushed I felt and I just didn't like that side to Donald, he was really mean-spirited in this one. The real delight were the characters, Mickey, Goofy, Donald, Daisy, Minnie, Donald's nephews and Scrooge McDuck are always a delight, and just seeing them was a delight in itself.

In fact, my only other real complaints are some parts that drag and that the narration occasionally got a tad over-eager, it wouldn't have hurt to have brought Kelsey Grammar back as his narration was note-perfect. Other than that, it is a very nice Christmas film. 8/10 Bethany Cox

Mickey's Twice Upon A Christmas came out on DVD last week and I was a skeptic. Sure, Pixar and Disney have had (mostly) homeruns with their computer animated films. Sure, their are currently two computer animated films dominating the US domestic box-office,.....a death knell for traditional animation unfortunately. Still, I've enjoyed most of these films. Why not a computer animated Mickey, Donald, & Goofy? Well, why not indeed.

Mickey's Twice Upon A Christmas, is a good holiday family film. It isn't too cloyingly sweet, it's probably got more in common with recent Mickey/Donald/Goofy films than with Mickey's Christmas Carol (my personal fave), but, it certainly tries and actually has good stories (it's an anthology of mostly, fluffy yule-tide tales). I liked the Pluto/ Reindeer storyline in particular. Anyway, how does a CGI Mickey look? Surprisingly good. A few years ago a company released another ,...ahem,...homage to a classic Christmas special about a certain reindeer with a red nose. It stunk and it was CGI. Not so with this movie. Mickey's Twice Upon a Christmas uses computer animation well and it looks good, has a good storyline, and is overall successful and worthy to add to your collection of Disney DVD's. I certainly hope we don't just get CGI animation from Disney or other companies anymore, although, it really looks like we may,...*sigh* But, if the quality is like Mickey's Twice Upon A Christmas it'll definitely soften the blow. So, warm up some Cocoa and pop this one into your DVD player over the holidays.

I saw a clip of this and knew from the start that this was different from the same old Mickey Christmas movies that they come out with every year knowing it will sell. This one is an exception, the animation is flawless (literally), the colors are magnificent, and the stories are solid. The special features are a for little kids, but the movie is for all ages. You would think this is a cliché, wimpy Mickey Mouse movie (quite the contrary);however, if you're looking for a landslide from boring Disney movies I would recommend this this. This is also has a hint of sarcasm in this movie which is extremely rare for a animated Disney movie. Comedy is one of the many reasons you should see this movie.

Where 'Once Upon a Christmas' was a standard Disney cartoon with the famous characters as you are used to seeing them, this film presents five computer-generated shorts including a battle on ice with Minnie Mouse squaring up to Daisy Duck; Mickey Mouse losing Pluto after an argument, whereby the hapless dog gets adopted by reindeer; and Donald Duck's nephews causing havoc in Santa's workshop at the North Pole. The other two shorts - Donald Duck losing the Christmas spirit; and Goofy's son Max trying to impress his girlfriend even while his dad is around, are less memorable, but still good.

The CGI animation doesn't sit well with Mickey, Donald, Goofy and Pluto, and so takes some getting used to - however, once this obstacle is overcome, the film can be enjoyed, and with modern touches will probably entertain the little ones more than its predecessor.