UPDATE: Gentle readers, do not be fooled by the fact that this IMDb review has received so many negative (un-"useful" votes). ALL of those votes were cast by the same person, a very sad individual with too much free time on his hands ... who sends me emails at regular intervals, demanding that I change this review to make it more favourable. Now, here's my review:
Oh, what a piece of crap is this. Why do American television companies see Christmas as an opportunity to produce so many crap-awful specials? In Britain, Christmas is just an opportunity for the TV stations to show a James Bond movie.
I ought to have been warned off watching "'Twas the Night Before Christmas" when I saw that it was produced by Rankin/Bass, a production company that has churned out far too much unwatchable rubbish. But I'm a great fan of Tammy Grimes and Joel Grey, and John McGiver is very high on my list of all-time favourite character actors, so I sought out this animated film when I saw that they were listed in the cast.
This story is awful. It's intended for kids, but kids deserve something better than this. The animation is terrible: far below Rankin/Bass's usual wretched standard. Joel Grey and Tammy Grimes are wasted in badly-written roles. Tammy Grimes was a very sexy actress with a very distinctive voice (and a cod accent), so it's disturbing to hear her voice issuing from the badly-animated mouth of a badly-drawn MALE character.
Worst of all is the character written for poor John McGiver. He plays a blowhard mayor, and the scriptwriter has given McGiver a terrible gimmick which is difficult to perform and not funny at all. Every single time McGiver speaks, his character launches into a bombastic speech with lots of long complicated esoteric sesquipedalian words, but invariably he gives up the struggle halfway through the sentence, says 'Aw, heck!' and then uses plain speaking to say what he'd meant to say in the first place. I always considered McGiver a brilliant actor, but he can't transcend this terrible running gag which isn't funny.
I give somebody some credit for casting George Gobel in the lead role of a mouse. Gobel was a very self-effacing actor who deserved to be better known, and who was (elsewhere, not here) extremely funny in a soft-spoken and low-key way. His established persona fits perfectly with the mouse character he plays here. Too bad it's so terribly written.
This cartoon is ostensibly based on the famous poem "A Visit from St Nicholas", known incorrectly as "'Twas the Night Before Christmas" and traditionally credited to Clement Moore ... but the link is very tenuous indeed. (The poem mentions a mouse, and this cartoon is full of talking mice.) On top of everything else, we now have solid evidence that Clement Moore stole the credit for this poem, which was originally published anonymously. In the year 2001, a letter surfaced which Moore wrote to the editors of the newspaper that originally published this poem, asking whether any of the editors knew the name of the poem's author. When they replied that they did not, Moore waited until the death of the poem's true author, and then he took credit. None of Clement Moore's own poems show even a glimmer of the talent present in "'Twas the Night Before Christmas" ... by which I mean the poem, not this terrible animated cartoon. There is substantial forensic evidence that the true author of this beloved poem was Major Henry Livingston, Jnr, scion of a patriotic family that helped finance the American Revolution.
Parents, let your kids do anything at all on Christmas rather than letting them watch this horrible cartoon. It will turn their brains into figgy pudding. I'll rate "'Twas the Night Before Christmas" zero points out of 10. Bah, humbug!
Oh, what a piece of crap is this. Why do American television companies see Christmas as an opportunity to produce so many crap-awful specials? In Britain, Christmas is just an opportunity for the TV stations to show a James Bond movie.
I ought to have been warned off watching "'Twas the Night Before Christmas" when I saw that it was produced by Rankin/Bass, a production company that has churned out far too much unwatchable rubbish. But I'm a great fan of Tammy Grimes and Joel Grey, and John McGiver is very high on my list of all-time favourite character actors, so I sought out this animated film when I saw that they were listed in the cast.
This story is awful. It's intended for kids, but kids deserve something better than this. The animation is terrible: far below Rankin/Bass's usual wretched standard. Joel Grey and Tammy Grimes are wasted in badly-written roles. Tammy Grimes was a very sexy actress with a very distinctive voice (and a cod accent), so it's disturbing to hear her voice issuing from the badly-animated mouth of a badly-drawn MALE character.
Worst of all is the character written for poor John McGiver. He plays a blowhard mayor, and the scriptwriter has given McGiver a terrible gimmick which is difficult to perform and not funny at all. Every single time McGiver speaks, his character launches into a bombastic speech with lots of long complicated esoteric sesquipedalian words, but invariably he gives up the struggle halfway through the sentence, says 'Aw, heck!' and then uses plain speaking to say what he'd meant to say in the first place. I always considered McGiver a brilliant actor, but he can't transcend this terrible running gag which isn't funny.
I give somebody some credit for casting George Gobel in the lead role of a mouse. Gobel was a very self-effacing actor who deserved to be better known, and who was (elsewhere, not here) extremely funny in a soft-spoken and low-key way. His established persona fits perfectly with the mouse character he plays here. Too bad it's so terribly written.
This cartoon is ostensibly based on the famous poem "A Visit from St Nicholas", known incorrectly as "'Twas the Night Before Christmas" and traditionally credited to Clement Moore ... but the link is very tenuous indeed. (The poem mentions a mouse, and this cartoon is full of talking mice.) On top of everything else, we now have solid evidence that Clement Moore stole the credit for this poem, which was originally published anonymously. In the year 2001, a letter surfaced which Moore wrote to the editors of the newspaper that originally published this poem, asking whether any of the editors knew the name of the poem's author. When they replied that they did not, Moore waited until the death of the poem's true author, and then he took credit. None of Clement Moore's own poems show even a glimmer of the talent present in "'Twas the Night Before Christmas" ... by which I mean the poem, not this terrible animated cartoon. There is substantial forensic evidence that the true author of this beloved poem was Major Henry Livingston, Jnr, scion of a patriotic family that helped finance the American Revolution.
Parents, let your kids do anything at all on Christmas rather than letting them watch this horrible cartoon. It will turn their brains into figgy pudding. I'll rate "'Twas the Night Before Christmas" zero points out of 10. Bah, humbug!