La Cour de récré : Les Vacances de Noël

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.

When I first heard of a Recess Christmas Movie I was really excited because I am a HUGE Recess fan. After I watched it I was a little upset. There was basically no new footage in this movie. The movie contains a little part with Mrs. Finster, Principal Prickly, and Mrs. Grotkey getting stuck in a snowstorm. The rest of the movie is just clips from other Recess episodes. I expected better than this.

I was really hoping for a full new Recess movie - Not this. The only thing I really liked about this movie was the clip form "Weekend at Muriels", which is one of my favorite Recess episodes.

Overall I give this movie 5/10 stars.

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.

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

...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.