Holy Christ. Are Disney entering the Pantomime industry? ‘Cos if you’re demented enough to show this to your children, pray to god they’re smart enough that when, after the first dire musical number, “Cinderella”, as the imposter introduces herself, says, “Hello, I’m Cinderella,” they’ll cry, “Oh no you’re not!”

What you get: The Twelve Days of Christmas – Disnified. On the first day, it’s a “magical shell of the sea”, featuring shots featuring shells from the Little Mermaid movie which we’re lucky to see a dozen times. By the time they get to the 5th day, they already have to airbrush a floating CGI “emerald” ring into the magic carpet scene from Aladdin to make the song work. Yeh. You get a clip from Sleeping Beauty, stripped of its original classic Disney soundtrack. You get a rather lengthy, relatively untouched excerpt from Belle’s Enchanted Christmas, just to remind you how good Disney DTV things can be. You get an Ariel “read-a-long” storybook thing which really should be an extra on the DVD, not part of the movie … There are a handful of older shorts I hadn’t seen before which were slightly nice I guess but really only serve to accentuate how much of a mindless hodge-podge this mess is.

Now I know, I know, it’s a stupid direct to video thing and criticism is relatively moot, I shouldn’t be wasting my time even writing about it. Who needs to know about something so irrelevant? And if I hadn’t had a bunch of reviews to rush through yesterday afternoon, I probably would’ve saved this for another year, or even begun it and actually turned a movie off part-way for the first time in donkey’s years, lol. As it is, at least I can be thankful that this is another Christmas experience I don’t have to relive again.

But there’s one last thing that does make me feel like I have to write about it, draw attention to it, because the more I think about it the more it irks me. The segment of this compilation that really made me want to sling the TV out the window and renounce Disney for life was an early excerpt from Fantasia 2000 – The Steadfast Tin Soldier – destroyed by the fact it’s again stripped of its original soundtrack by Shostakovich, the piece it was specifically animated to, for the lord’s sake, replaced by the same rotten MIDI-ish score that these cheapest of Disney DTV productions are beset by. It amazes me how many people seem to be forgiving of this in the few positive reviews I’ve read. I can take the woodenly animated Princesses, the practically dead Princes at their sides, the cardboard cut out audience, even the read-a-long storybook. But to take one of their most artistically ambitious productions of the last decade and do that to it? Seriously, Disney should be ashamed of taking people’s money for this one.

Lord in hell. I’ve been hanging on to this one looking for the urge to watch since January and now I know why. Right from the first second, this one is just packed to the gills with bad cheap gag after bad cheap gag. Male-female stereotypes even the most stereotypical of man or woman will find insultingly low. Only a toddler could possibly enjoy these 80 minutes, and the gratuitous bad language quick puts that idea to bed, which leaves only adults with the mind of a toddler. Avoid like the plague – and in fact, I urge you to even physically prevent complete strangers from going near it in the video store – make it your random act of kindness for the day. The songs almost make it worth something, I have to say – but it’s just so damn cheap from the start, there’s really nothing it could do to put things right.

It’s not often I verbally assault a movie before its title comes up onscreen. I was expecting this to be bad, though at the same time willing to give it the best of chances, not least since I discovered it’s directed by Rick Rosenthal who made Part 2. But, “she killed the wrong guy”??! Jesus Christ, resurrection by dog’s piss or lightning a la Freddy and Jason sequels would be more respectful than this! AND THEN THEY KILL HER?!! (No, that’s not a spoiler … this movie is impossible to spoil more than the way it comes unaided.) This is even before the reality TV show set-up I expected to hate! lol

Seriously, just ignore this movie. It ended with Laurie’s heavy breathing and then Rob Zombie started it again. This never happened. Please god, this never happened, lol.

“At least I saw the wild before it disappeared.”

Oh, but if only it would disappear now that I’ve seen it …

Now, I know this movie has so little to really do with Disney that they can almost be forgiven anyway … but the first thing I found myself wondering here is whether it was a good or bad thing that I’d seen the monumental act of repentance that was Meet the Robinsons before this absolute jawdropper of a stinker from last year.

On the one hand, I found myself watching and knowing that the company has since picked itself up off its ass and moved on. On the other, I’d kind of loved to have seen Meet the Robinsons with the anger raging in me following The Wild – it’d be interesting to see how forgiving I’d be. For this, really, truly, is an unbearably awful movie. I’m sorry, but I don’t even wanna dignify it with more words than that. Ill-conceived on every level. Good lighting and rendering is no longer impressive, guys. Edit: The director has “Spaz” in his name. I guess I can’t say they didn’t warn me.

AGH! Kill it! Kill it dead with fire!

Ah, the perils of, “I’ll watch anything.” Actually, I’d probably have watched this even if I wasn’t such a movie whore. I more than frequently find myself quite liking these girly things – I watch Nick to what I believe is probably considered an unhealthy extent, heck I even love Bratz – and I do like Hilary Duff’s music, sometimes, again, more than is healthy for my brain banana. But this is too far.

Within 10 minutes and a quick skim of the plot synopsis I’d realised that it is basically an Olsen Twins movie – and not the good, late kind, like Passport to Paris (yes, I like it) or New York Minute (honestly, that one’s good) ... a pre-teen Olsen Twins movie, the straight-to-video kind – yet these two sisters are in their twenties and should f**king well know better, they make Paris Hilton look smart (heck, I think Paris is quite smart … then, I thought Hilary Duff was smarter than this so what do I know?), and these filmmakers have laughably decided to add insult to injury by shooting the whole thing in self-important 2:35.

How they got Angelica Huston and Brent Spiner involved, I don’t wanna know – the scene with them both in the same frame together with the Duffs made me want to crawl into a hole and die for the film makers. There have been some incredible movies made over the past couple of years, but it seems the spectrum is expanding both ways – I truly never thought I’d see a movie worse than Epic Movie, but I’m afraid to say this takes the urinal cake. Even the outtakes at the end are sub-Olsens on the laughometer.

Jesus. Wept. I’ve been pretty nice to the Scary Movies so I felt bad when I found myself 20 minutes into this actually clutching my own jaw in embarrassment for the artists involved. So it was with great relief I discovered this has little to do with those spoofs except in naming convention (*edit*: okay I looked again and obviously I was blind the first time round – the same writers are involved – whatever). My defense of those movies – basically, “what do you expect?” – to be fair actually pretty much stands here as well. But in the end, just, dear God, no thank you. This is laziness of the lowest and most deplorable form and it bears repeating just how cringe-worthily embarrassing it is to watch. It doesn’t deserve this many words. And yet, I can’t help but urge people to see it, because that’s the only way to comprehend its … UGHness. When you feel you have to have a character actually mumble, “It’s stuck!” when 1) it’s frickin’ obvious her tongue is stuck to the post in Gnarnia (“For legal reasons” – actual line) and 2) we knew it was gonna be stuck to the post about 10 minutes previously – let’s face it, it’s time to find a new career path. Make no mistake – this movie is f*cking terrible. Yes – even worse than Timothy Hines’ War of the Worlds.

Okay I finally mustered the strength to watch the second half of this abomination, and dear lord, I’d nearly forgotten how terrible the first half was. I’m truly, truly not kidding when I say, this is the worst film ever made. I’ve had to create a new rating image because even one star is too much.

There are certain movies that are, as the old saying goes, “so bad it’s good,” and there are moments here that fulfil that criteria. Most of the visual effects need to be seen to believed (words cannot express the utter badness of them), ditto the acting and the way the actors are bluescreened into what appears to be a doll’s house set. But this movie is 3 hours long, and there’s a point where you simply have to stop admiring it in the same way you might admire the efforts of like, say, a 2-year-old wiping their own behind, and simply accept it for the insult it really is. I’m baffled as to how anybody watched the footage for this movie pass before their eyes and felt that it was releasable to the general public. I’ve seen porno movies with more integrity, probably better effects, lol. These guys really should be ashamed of themselves. If you watch this, and I kinda-sorta recommend it because there’s no other way of comprehending the badness, don’t pay – wait for it on TV, get it from the library, buy it from somewhere with a loose returns policy.