Like many reviews are noticing this is the first time we see Mickey Mouse and friends in CGI. Honestly I'll go ahead and say that the animation is pretty good for a straight-to-video movie in 2004. Sure Mickey and Minnie's models don't have their ears swiveling when they turn, but the animation is really nice and doesn't just look like the animators were rushed to work with a cheap budget. This is how you animate a straight-to-video CGI movie in the 2000's.
However the story more importantly isn't as compared. Mickey's Once Upon a Christmas did a great job telling a three-part story about Mickey, Donald, and Goofy with their lives and family together with a few morals involved. Here we have five stories that have just as much zaniness, but the lessons are flawed. The characters don't really learn anything in this movie, and when they somewhat do learn something it's after another character was actually being the one who was mean-spirited. The first segment with Minnie Mouse and Daisy Duck ice-skating has Daisy overly jealous all because Minnie went first. The second segment with Donald Duck has Huey, Dewey, and Louie proven to be very misbehaved for any Christmas presents, which they go to the North Pole just so they can cheat their way onto the nice list. The third segment is just Goofy humiliating his son Max in front of his girlfriend who for some reason isn't even his actual girlfriend Roxanne from A Goofy Movie. The fourth segment features Donald Duck again where he just wants to go home and relax after hearing "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" in a non-stop chase scene and he eventually is driven crazy to the point where he destroys an entire animatronic theatre. And the final segment features Mickey Mouse and Pluto as he punishes Pluto because he didn't let him put the star on the tree making
him want to leave for good. Most of the characters are just jerks in this movie. It's really unfortunate that they try to send this off as a proper message when they're not even being good role models.
But I get it, it's a kids movie. And it still holds some impressive effort aside from the character development and the messages. The stories still flow pretty well and were paced properly. The jokes are at par. The voice actors do a wonderful job like always. And the soundtrack was decent. This just isn't able to meet up to what the first movie accomplished.
