This short film was taped for me when I was young, but the recording was lost early on. I remember enjoying it, but twenty or more years later I wouldn't have been able to tell you a single thing about it other than it's about two mice and an orphan girl.
The synopsis for the film is "Animated story about the creation of the song "Silent Night"" and to be quite frank, that isn't anything I recall of the film at all. Even as I was re-watching it and recalling more of the story, this part of the film just seemed non-existent. That is, until you get to the end and Father Joseph miraculously wrote lyrics to a new piece of music he was hearing in real time under two seconds. Then, as they were preforming for the queen, she burst into a duet of the song even though she has never heard of it before.
The mice should have preformed the song for the two church men to help scramble something together for the queen's visit. Perhaps as a charitable gesture knowing that they'd never get monetary reward for it?
Of course that suggestion is not taking into account the true story of how it was written, and if we're going to criticise that aspect I will say that it's a bit shitty to credit the melody of the work not on the real-life men who wrote it, but to a mouse who wrote the song and whose friend happened to have played it in the church where it echoed - prompting the church men to effectively steal the melody.
The writing was rather poor and felt like somebody's first draft. The short film had more story than it was able to deal with. We could have done a lot more with the orphan girl and her being framed for the theft of the treasure. The songs are not ear-grating I suppose and while the animation is rather poor (with Father Joseph's design sticking out like a sore thumb amongst the rest of the designs), its not terribly ugly.
I can say, however, that the voice performances truly carried this film, especially the leads; Phil Hartman and Jim Cummings.
I wouldn't recommend this film for any particular reason other than somebody who is scraping the bottom of the "I guess it will do" pile of rather poor children's Christmas media to keep them entertained over the holidays. There are far better offerings one could choose, but if you've dried that well up, this is not horrifically terrible.
The synopsis for the film is "Animated story about the creation of the song "Silent Night"" and to be quite frank, that isn't anything I recall of the film at all. Even as I was re-watching it and recalling more of the story, this part of the film just seemed non-existent. That is, until you get to the end and Father Joseph miraculously wrote lyrics to a new piece of music he was hearing in real time under two seconds. Then, as they were preforming for the queen, she burst into a duet of the song even though she has never heard of it before.
The mice should have preformed the song for the two church men to help scramble something together for the queen's visit. Perhaps as a charitable gesture knowing that they'd never get monetary reward for it?
Of course that suggestion is not taking into account the true story of how it was written, and if we're going to criticise that aspect I will say that it's a bit shitty to credit the melody of the work not on the real-life men who wrote it, but to a mouse who wrote the song and whose friend happened to have played it in the church where it echoed - prompting the church men to effectively steal the melody.
The writing was rather poor and felt like somebody's first draft. The short film had more story than it was able to deal with. We could have done a lot more with the orphan girl and her being framed for the theft of the treasure. The songs are not ear-grating I suppose and while the animation is rather poor (with Father Joseph's design sticking out like a sore thumb amongst the rest of the designs), its not terribly ugly.
I can say, however, that the voice performances truly carried this film, especially the leads; Phil Hartman and Jim Cummings.
I wouldn't recommend this film for any particular reason other than somebody who is scraping the bottom of the "I guess it will do" pile of rather poor children's Christmas media to keep them entertained over the holidays. There are far better offerings one could choose, but if you've dried that well up, this is not horrifically terrible.