Rapsittie Street Kids: Believe in Santa

Rapsittie Street Kids: Believe in Santa

Genre:	Animation Christmas
Directed By:	Colin Slater
Written By:	Trisha Koury-Stoops Colin Slater
Starring:	Walter Jones Paige O'Hara Eddie Driscoll Nancy Cartwright Mark Hamill Jodi Benson Clint Howard Sarina Grant Debra Wilson
Photography:	Color
Distributed By:	Wolf Tracer Studios J. Rose Productions
Release Date:	November 25, 2002
Country:	United States
Sequel:	Rapsittie Street Kids: A Bunny's Tale (cancelled)

Rapsittie Street Kids: Believe in Santa is a musical CGI Christmas TV movie from Wolf Tracer Studios Inc. and J Rose Productions and produced by Colin Slater that aired on The WB on November 25, 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 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 Sucks

Very appalling and awful animation quality, especially the characters' movements, making it look like a PS1 cutscene.
- The camera movements and angles are very inconsistent and jerky.
- The lip-syncing is very poor, due to the awful character designs.
- Atrocious CGI. The character models are blocky and look unfinished with awkward, creepy facial expressions and faces made of angular, jumbled polygons. The backgrounds also look ugly, and some background elements are just pasted-in two-dimensional clipart.
There are tons of glaring animation errors:
- Numerous clipping and layering issues with the character models. Arms and legs frequently clip through bodies or objects.
- In one scene, Lenee’s father blinks, and you can see through his eyelids.
- In the opening scene with Ricky, when he walks, his feet continuously dip past the ground.
- In many scenes, when one character moves, the others stand frozen and still.
- When the characters walk in the snow, they leave no footprints.
- 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.
- On the school marquee, they misspelled the word “excellence.”
- When the letter flies in the air, it moves like a screensaver.
The movie has an unoriginal storyline that is typical of many Christmas movies.
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.
- Due to an audio problem, Grandma's speech is mostly garbled and incomprehensible gibberish.
Misleading title: It's about believing in Santa Claus, but the character questioning his existence isn't the main character, and the story is mostly about Nicole realizing the true meaning of Christmas.
- 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.
A lot of unlikable and stereotypical characters, especially Nicole herself.
- Smithy has a misogynistic attitude towards females, which also sends out a wrong message.
Bizarre and horrible ending. It ends with a terrible line: "Shut that door!"
The musical numbers are at their worst. Nicole's "Look at Me," for example, consists mostly 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 you count Ricky's rapping, but their combined length doesn't even add up to half of the length of "Look at Me".
Loads of filler in scenes that go nowhere and add nothing to the plot.
In one scene, one of the bullies annoy a girl, and when she tells Ms. Parmington, she says that it means he "likes" her, which sends out the wrong message.
Poor voice direction, especially from veteran actors, such as Mark Hamill (who only gets eight lines), and Nancy Cartwright, who somehow got a producer role.
The director, Colin Slater, is an infamous online scam artist who, as stated before, charged the owner of the Lost Media Wiki twice for the print of the film.

Redeeming Qualities

Some unintentionally funny moments, such as when Smithy tackles one of the bullies.
Some likable characters like Ricky and Lenee.
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.

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 wasting almost the entire $500,000 budget on voice actors and not outsourcing the animation.
According to one producer's daughter, Grandma wasn't supposed to speak the way she does, and it appears to be a result of using corrupted audio recording files and not bothering to check the result.
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 Grey Griffin blocks people on Twitter that mention this movie to her.