La Cour de récré : Les Vacances de Noël

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.

...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 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

This was the worst movie of the recess ones. I don't want to be to harsh but I have to say it was boring. The title is good but the storyline is crap. I give the storyline a low 7/10. The animation gets a high 7/10. All Christmas movies that I have seen are good like Eloise at Christmastime,Home Alone,Home Alone 2 and Mickeys Christmas movie everyone except Recess:miracle on third street school. I liked Principal Prickly and Mikey in this film because they had the best and main parts in this Recess film.In this film they showed different episodes of Recess and my favourite one is the great can drive in which the recess gang want to beat the Ashleys for collecting more cans for thanksgiving.

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.