La Cour de récré : Les Vacances de Noël

When I found out that Recess one of my favorite T.V. shows was going to have a Christmas video, I thought: It's probably the T.V. Christmas special. But I was wrong. This was a good movie. It really isn't as good as the show, but I liked it though. Disney scores again (something that in the T.V. world with them never happens hardly.)!

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.

If you were expecting a full blown Christmas film from the Recess crew, you'll be out of luck as this straight to video release is just a compilation of episodes set around Thanksgiving and Christmas. There is some new animation between the shorts though, in order to link them together and make a complete narrative. However, at only around an hour in length, Recess Christmas: Miracle on Third Street is nothing more than a cash grab by the Disney company.

The episodes featured include "The Great Can Drive", where the students at Third Street compete to collect the most canned goods in order to win a prize. Of course, like most stories with a moral, the kids lose sight of the meaning of the season, besides Mikey. "Principal For a Day" sees TJ get a shot at power when he sits in Prickly's seat. "Weekend at Muriel's" is an unrelated episode involving Spinelli and Miss Finster. The Christmas episode, "Yes, Mikey, Santa Does Shave" sees the kids do a school play.

James Earl Jones lends his voice to Santa, and Dick Clark portrays himself. And as always, Robert Goulet is the singing voice of Mikey Blumberg. As of 2024, all three of these legendary men have now passed away. Since Disney has no current plans to release the series on physical media disc, these episodes are just a few that are available on DVD.

Yet another forced animated sequel from Disney.

'Recess Christmas: Miracle On Third Street' is a compilation of four different stories, which as always leads to a disjointed film. While the stories themselves are somewhat entertaining, they add nothing to the preceding film.

The animation is a step down but still satisfactory, just like everything else including the cast. On that note, it is cool to hear two well known voices appear in James Earl Jones (Mister) and Michael McKean (Mr Bream) - not that they add much to the film, admittedly.

Again, if you love the television series then I am sure you'll enjoy this. However, with a few exceptions, these 'Frankenstein's monster' films are usually always a mess and this isn't much different unfortunately. Just stick and have belief in one story, it isn't that hard to do so.

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?