I think I heard about this movie on Slate.com's periodic posting of "The Worst Cinematic Crap of All-Time." It reminded me of the movies that served as fodder for "Mystery Science Theater 3000." On the always-unproductive day before Christmas Vacation, I found it on the internet and showed part of it to my 6th grade class, without telling them anything about what they were about to view.
At first the sixth graders were happy not to have to do actual work. The campiness of the stock-footage Caribou and the horrid elf songs and even more horrid kazoo singing were lost on them, but soon confusion and irritation set in. When I paused it after about 10 minutes to ask them what they thought of it, I got questions like "Why are Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer in it?" "Why would the elf use a hammer to make a stuffed animal?" "Why is Santa so skinny?" "Where is the Ice Cream Bunny?" They were impressed by the kid jumping off the roof with the patio umbrella parachute, though.
I explained that these were all good questions, and that I didn't have an answer for any of them, but that they were watching what was widely considered to be the worst kids' movie of all time. Thanks to the beauty of streaming video, I was able to show them the remaining 80(!) or so minutes of this crap in about ten minutes, by skipping to various scenes and adding my own narration of what they were seeing.
The sixth graders' reactions: *The attempts to free the sleigh using barnyard animals were amusing, but mostly confusing. *The horse-on-a-rail ride at Pirate World looks like a lot of fun. *The sets for Thumbalina are uproariously horrid. *It's really random to have a completely different movie inside of another movie. *Why did Santa go to all that trouble if the sleigh could just disappear on its own? They mostly enjoyed it because it was better than taking a spelling test and sixth graders love making fun of stuff.
Why does this movie suck so much? Sure, the movie has terrible songs, a completely ridiculous "plot," an unrelated movie that is 2/3 of the total run time grafted into the middle of it, it serves as an advertisement for a defunct theme park in central Florida, and it looks like it was filmed on a weekend with about a budget of $300, but the real reason it sucks is because of the EDITING.
My gripe isn't even that it's obvious that only one camera was used to film this, so nearly every scene is shot from a distance. It's that every scene is about 5 times longer than it has to be! Overly-long footage of kids running, Santa fanning himself and staring at the sun, and walking, walking, walking! The worst is the "daring rescue" in the fire truck. It is literally five minutes (I timed it!) of driving at about 5 mph, with the only interesting thing happening when the dog stops to drink from a puddle in front of the truck and almost gets run over.
It's fairly easy to find part or all of S&TICB on the internet, but remember, your only reason for watching it should be to avoid taking a spelling test or because you like making fun of things.
At first the sixth graders were happy not to have to do actual work. The campiness of the stock-footage Caribou and the horrid elf songs and even more horrid kazoo singing were lost on them, but soon confusion and irritation set in. When I paused it after about 10 minutes to ask them what they thought of it, I got questions like "Why are Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer in it?" "Why would the elf use a hammer to make a stuffed animal?" "Why is Santa so skinny?" "Where is the Ice Cream Bunny?" They were impressed by the kid jumping off the roof with the patio umbrella parachute, though.
I explained that these were all good questions, and that I didn't have an answer for any of them, but that they were watching what was widely considered to be the worst kids' movie of all time. Thanks to the beauty of streaming video, I was able to show them the remaining 80(!) or so minutes of this crap in about ten minutes, by skipping to various scenes and adding my own narration of what they were seeing.
The sixth graders' reactions: *The attempts to free the sleigh using barnyard animals were amusing, but mostly confusing. *The horse-on-a-rail ride at Pirate World looks like a lot of fun. *The sets for Thumbalina are uproariously horrid. *It's really random to have a completely different movie inside of another movie. *Why did Santa go to all that trouble if the sleigh could just disappear on its own? They mostly enjoyed it because it was better than taking a spelling test and sixth graders love making fun of stuff.
Why does this movie suck so much? Sure, the movie has terrible songs, a completely ridiculous "plot," an unrelated movie that is 2/3 of the total run time grafted into the middle of it, it serves as an advertisement for a defunct theme park in central Florida, and it looks like it was filmed on a weekend with about a budget of $300, but the real reason it sucks is because of the EDITING.
My gripe isn't even that it's obvious that only one camera was used to film this, so nearly every scene is shot from a distance. It's that every scene is about 5 times longer than it has to be! Overly-long footage of kids running, Santa fanning himself and staring at the sun, and walking, walking, walking! The worst is the "daring rescue" in the fire truck. It is literally five minutes (I timed it!) of driving at about 5 mph, with the only interesting thing happening when the dog stops to drink from a puddle in front of the truck and almost gets run over.
It's fairly easy to find part or all of S&TICB on the internet, but remember, your only reason for watching it should be to avoid taking a spelling test or because you like making fun of things.