Rapsittie Street Kids: Believe in Santa

Rapsittie Street Kids: Believe in Santa (or simply Rapsittie Street Kids) is a musical CGI Christmas TV movie from Wolf Tracer Studios Inc. and J Rose Productions and directed by Colin Slater that aired on The WB on December 8, 2002. It was never aired again after that due to its negative reception. As a result, it was lost for 13 years until Dycaite, owner and founder of the Lost Media Wiki, managed to secure a copy from the director, Colin Slater (who charged him twice for it and tried to claim he "didn't own the film").

Plot
Nicole, a spoiled and cynical girl receives a teddy bear as a gift from her classmate Ricky. Nicole sees no value in the bear and trashes it. When she learns the sentiments behind the gift and the "true meaning of Christmas", Nicole and her friends attempt to hunt down the trashed stuffed animal before it's too late.

Why It Isn't the True Meaning of Christmas

 * 1) Very appalling and awful animation quality, especially the characters' movements. This is due to the animation software they used "3D Choreographer", which was an already outdated software from 1992.
 * 2) * The camera movements and angles are very inconsistent and jerky.
 * 3) * The characters also seem to be green screened in rather than actually animated on to the background.
 * 4) * The lip-syncing is very poor, due to the awful character designs.
 * 5) * Dreadful CGI animation. The character models, in particular, are blocky and look unfinished with awkward, creepy facial expressions and faces made of angular, jumbled polygons, and their design plus their movements make them look like rejected background characters from Baldi's Basics in Education and Learning. The backgrounds also look ugly, and some background elements are just pasted-in two-dimensional clipart.
 * 6) There are tons of glaring animation errors:
 * 7) * Numerous clipping and layering issues with the character models. Arms and legs frequently clip through bodies or objects.
 * 8) * Various lighting issues on character models.
 * 9) * In one scene, Lenee’s father blinks, and his eyelids are still visible.
 * 10) * In another scene, Lenee's legs clip through her skirt when she walks.
 * 11) * In the opening scene with Ricky, when he walks, his feet continuously dip past the ground.
 * 12) * In many scenes, when one character moves, the others stand frozen and still.
 * 13) * When the characters walk in the snow, they leave no footprints.
 * 14) * The circular objects in the movie barely even look like circles and more like flat cut-outs, showing some extreme inexperience since spheres should be the easiest things to render.
 * 15) *Many background elements are terribly pixelated and you can even see the white lines from were they were cut out of.
 * 16) * On the school marquee, the word “excellence” is misspelled.
 * 17) * When the letter flies in the air, it moves like a screensaver.
 * 18) Terrible direction. According to one of the animators, Colin Slater gave little to no actual direction during production and would only look at the progress once in a while and say: "That's good, keep going." Slater also apparently never saw the finished project until he watched the premier on television.
 * 19) Who is the main character? as it seems as if the movie can't decide on who should be the main protagonist, sometimes it's Ricky, sometimes it's Nicole.
 * 20) The movie has an unoriginal storyline that is typical of many Christmas movies.
 * 21) Terrible dialogue, especially the infamous "I'm ready to skate bigger and faster than my mom can make the biggest sandwich in the world" line.
 * 22) Misleading title: It's about believing in Santa Claus, but the character questioning his existence isn't even the main character, and the story is mostly about Nicole realizing the true meaning of Christmas.
 * 23) * Also, the title of the film is called Rapsittie Street Kids, yet only one character, Ricky, raps throughout the movie, so the title and the rapping are entirely pointless.
 * 24) ** Speaking of which, Ricky’s raps are cringeworthy.
 * 25) A lot of unlikable characters.
 * 26) * Smithy has a stereotypical "girls are icky' personality and constantly mocks Nicole and Leene for being female. This can send out the wrong message.
 * 27) * Nicole is portrayed as being a snotty, self-centered, and arrogant teenage blonde girl who sees herself as "perfect" in every possible way. She's even at her worse when Ricky gives her his beloved teddy bear as a present to her and she just angrily scolds him for it and throws it away.
 * 28) Bizarre and horrible ending which doesn't fit at all in a Christmas movie. It ends with a terrible line: "Shut that door!"
 * 29) The musical numbers are unbearable. The most notable being Nicole's Look at Me, which mainly consists of her standing still in front of a mirror and vaguely flailing her arms and upper body often clipping her forearms right through her torso. They're also oddly placed, with the first only turning up halfway through the special unless one counts Ricky's rapping, but their combined length doesn't even add up to half of the length of "Look at Me".
 * 30) Numerous continuity and plot holes that are extremely noticeable.
 * 31) * In one scene, Nicole laughs and makes fun of Leene for still believing in Santa Claus but a few minutes later during her "Look at Me" musical number, she joyfully signs about how Santa is the "best guy in the world" and how he's going to bring her presents.
 * 32) * In another scene were Ricky is writing a letter to Santa Claus, he uses a candle for light even though it's broad daylight outside.
 * 33) Loads of filler in scenes that go nowhere and add nothing to the plot.
 * 34) In one scene, one of the bullies harasses a girl and when she tells Ms. Parmington, she says that it means he "likes" her which sends out the wrong message.
 * 35) Poor voice direction, even from veteran actors, such as Mark Hamill (who only gets eight lines) and Nancy Cartwright, who somehow got a producer role.
 * 36) As pointed by SaberSpark, the company spends most of their money  ON ONLY ACTORS .
 * 37) It wasted the talents of some beloved voice actors; including Mark Hamill who voiced the Joker in Batman: The Animated Series, Nancy Cartwright who voiced Bart Simpson in The Simpsons, Jodi Benson who voiced Ariel in Disney's The Little Mermaid and Paige O'Hara who voiced Belle in Disney's Beauty and the Beast.

Redeeming Qualities

 * 1) Some unintentionally funny moments, such as when Smithy tackles one of the bullies, as well as Ricky's great-grandmother's voice lines.
 * 2) Some likable characters like Ricky and Lenee.
 * 3) When Nicole rejects Ricky’s gift, Ricky gets a surprisingly good line: “I get you a real gift, and you don’t get it.” Some awkward visuals accompany the line, but it‘s still great regardless.
 * 4) At least Nicole has a change of heart haft way through the special.
 * 5) The animation can be considered by some people to be hilariously bad.
 * 6) While the musical numbers are unbearable, the singing voice for Nicole, provided by Paige O'Hara (the voice of Belle from Beauty and the Beast), is still good.
 * 7) The end credits sound godly.

Trivia

 * The movie was going to get an Easter-themed sequel. During the end credits, Lenee's little sister says, "Don't forget to see me in The Bunny's Tale!" but due to the movie's poor reception, it got canceled.
 * The poor-quality animation was likely a result of spending almost the entire $500,000 budget on voice actors and not outsourcing the animation, although according to the producer’s daughter, it might’ve been a scam from Slater.
 * Slater has a low budget animation studio called Wolf Tracer that also made Wolf Tracer's Dinosaur Island
 * According to one producer's daughter, Grandma wasn't supposed to speak the way she does; as it appears to be a result of using corrupted audio recording files and not bothering to check the result, however, her voice actress did eventually reveal, "great grandma is disheveled. She can't put words together like she used to", proving this theory false.
 * Some of the cast and crew are ashamed of the movie. The producer's daughter called the film her "dad's biggest disappointment". Paige O' Hara joked that she was surprised someone remembered the special and Mark Hamill states that he doesn’t even remember the process of the film. And supposedly, Grey DeLisle will block anyone who mentions the film on her Twitter.
 * In 2015, the film had been found after being lost for 13 years.

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