User reviews

The 1964 film is a timeless Christmas classic, something that the whole family can watch again and again and find something new every time. Beautiful to look at, with lovely music, a terrific voice cast and an engaging story and characters, it enthralled with me ever since I was little(I am 17 now)and I still love it now. I did think the 1998 movie was sweet and above average, but it isn't as good as the 1964 version. However, this movie perceived as a sequel to the 1964 film is a bit of a mess. It has its heart in the right place and has an interesting premise, but in terms of execution it was ultimately disappointing.

Let's start with the few pros this movie had. It does mean well, and not completely heartless. It could very well be a decent movie for kids, if not for adults. I admit it, I liked this movie as a kid, but things have changed since. I really liked the idea of the story, about a Toy Taker taking toys and trying to spoil Christmas, and Rudolph trying to save the day. The incidental music was decent, if not particularly memorable.

Unfortunately, as much as I wanted to like this movie, everything else ranged to poor to absolutely horrible. While I liked the idea of the story, it was executed horribly. It took a long time to get going, and there are parts in the middle half where next to nothing happens. Need I say that there are a lot of disconnected scenes that are seemingly irrelevant to the plot? Also there doesn't seem to be any connection to the 1964 movie other than the characters' names. The dialogue wasn't any better, a vast majority of it was most uninspiring and entirely forgettable. And there are more clichés in the script alone than you can count.

Another con was the animation. I just want to say that I don't think the computer animation is quite as bad as it was in Doogal, which for me is an absolute disgrace of an animated film anyway, despite the exceptional cast. However, that isn't saying much. The character movement is very robotic, the camera work is disappointingly slow and the actual colours are extremely flat and dull. But I am in complete agreement with anybody who says the worst part was the songs. Almost all of them were absolutely horrible. Some truly plodding and unmemorable melodies and truly crass lyrics. The only song I came close to liking was the Toy Taker's song; then again I tend to root for the villain's songs in movies.

And what have I forgotten? Ah, yes the voice cast. Seriously there are some truly talented actors here, however they just couldn't do anything with the material they were given. I like Richard Dreyfuss, but his snowman narrator, in comparison to the brilliant Burl Ives who voiced him so wonderfully in the 1964 film, was boring and not benevolent enough. Kathaleen Barr as Rudolph... she is a talented voice actress, and acquitted herself well as the voice of Rudolph in the 1998 movie. But I felt as though it wasn't Kathaleen Barr here, her voice was I don't know... too bolshy here. And while I found Rudolph caring and genuinely cute in the 1964 and 1998 films, I am really sorry but I didn't care for him here. Jamie Lee Curtis; now she deserved better. Bad material and a close-to-embarrassing accent just doesn't cut it Jamie Lee. Garry Chalk does his best, but his Santa wasn't merry or cheery enough, John Goodman voiced him marvellously in the 1998 film. And then Rick Moranis, talk about disappointment. The Toy Taker was merely an okay villain, and great to look at. But vocally Moranis couldn't do anything at all with the character, and there wasn't enough of the character to fully develop properly.

All in all, despite some redeeming qualities, this was really disappointing, with a very predictable ending might I add? See the 1964 cartoon instead, and you may like the 1998 film. By all means, see this movie if you like it, but I think those who didn't like this movie are fans of the 1964 cartoon and was expecting something new. Sadly that didn't happen. 4/10 Bethany Cox

BEWARE OF FALSE REVIEWS & REVIEWERS. SOME REVIEWERS HAVE ONLY ONE REVIEW TO THEIR NAME. NOW WHEN ITS A POSITIVE REVIEW THAT TELLS ME THEY WERE INVOLVED WITH THE MOVIE. IF ITS A NEGATIVE REVIEW THEN THEY MIGHT HAVE A GRUDGE AGAINST THE FILM . NOW I HAVE REVIEWED OVER 300 HOLIDAY FILMS & SPECIALS. I HAVE NO AGENDA.

This was a major disappointment to me upon my viewing. I grew up watching the original and it has been a Christmas Tradition for many for years. I was excited to see that they made a sequel to the beloved Holiday Classic. However instead of expanding and growing the characters they just re-hash the same problems that Rudolph and Hermie the elf had in the first one.

In this film Rudolph, not satisfied with being a "novelty act" performing tricks with his nose, travels with Hermey to the Island of Misfit Toys to give King Moonracer a root canal. A storm sends Rudolph and Hermey to Castaway Cove where Rudolph considers having his nose made more normal-looking by a hippopotamus named Queen Camilla. However, Hermey doesn't feel that the change would sit well with Clarice, who is also being taught to fly. Meanwhile, the evil Toy Taker is stealing all of the toys from the island, including Santa's workshop, claiming that he's saving them from the inevitable fact that children eventually outgrow their toys and throw them away. Rudolph has a plan to foil the Toy Taker's plan by disguising themselves as toys.

This all sounds promising but most of this happens in the last 20 minutes of the film. The rest is just filler. Worse yet it is filler with BAD SONGS!

Sad that makers of this film were only doing this as a money grab. Had they wanted to create something with more heart then we would have gotten a better film.

I remember watching this when I was a young child, haven't watched it since. I didn't even think it was real.

You could tell this movie had it's heart in the right place, but just about everything else tells you this movie was slapped together without regard for visual appeal or even a good message for kids.

If you listen to the "director's commentary" (you'd think it would be a director's track, but instead it's only a 3-minute interview), they explain how this is the first time anyone on the team had done a computer-animated cartoon before, especially the B-movie director. And while this may have been cute as a bunch of student projects tied together, the whole mess just doesn't belong.

Can't be called a sequel if it has nothing to do with the first, can it?

I grew up watching the original 1964 Rudolph clay-mation special.......it is an almost perfect Christmas special with great voices, songs and magic.......... This 2001 version is soooooo painful I coughed up my egg nog.........the music is so sappy.........the dialogue painful.........after a few minutes you just wish the big hairy snowman would eat up the rest of the characters and call it a day........ This was just a quick money making scheme........and it probably worked........the computer graphics are awful....... STAY AWAY.........not even worth renting........it will give you nightmares..........

In the last couple of years there has been a marketing bonanza on the original Rudolph the Red nose Reindeer. You can buy just about anything from the original at Christmas time (Action Figures, plush toys, Bobbleheads, Ornaments, Wrapping Paper, Tree Skirts, Magnets, etc.).

This movie just came out so that the makers could get more money off the Rudolph frenzy.

First, I would say the worst thing about this movie was the soundtrack. They were all new songs and they were all terrible. I just looked at my wife and we were both cringing. I didn't even feel like a majority of the songs were even christmasy just stupid buddy songs. Maybe I am missing something maybe they made this movie for kids because the music was like something out of a Barney episode. Terrible!

The Animation was not the same as the first. The first was puppet. This one was a rehashed computer animated flick. And the computer animation was some of the poorest computer animation I have seen.

The characters in this movie were the same as from the last Rudolph but for some reason I found them annoying in this movie as opposed to cute in the first one. There were three new characters and they were not interesting or likable. You can tell that whoever made this movie did not get what the other christmas specials were all about. A talking annoying Hippo? In the North Pole? Let me ask you does that sound like something you would see in the first movie? The makers of this just wanted to make a few bucks and do no research. Everyone of the christmas specials had a narrator. The narrator would be an animated version of the person who is providing the voice: Burl Ives as the snowman in the first Rudolph, Fred Astaire in Santa Claus is Coming to Town, Jimmy Duartee in the first Frosty, Andy Griffith in the second Frosty, others include Ethel Merman, Shirley Booth, and Red Skelton. But for this one Richard Dryfus was just a boring snowman. The snowman looked nothing like Richard. This seems minor but just goes to show that there really is no similarity to the originals except that rights to the characters were purchased by the makers of this film. The story line is not in the same vain at all.

All in all pretty poor. If you must see this do not buy it like I did. Wait for it to come on tv or if you must, rent it.

I better recommendation would be to watch little known sequels: Rudolph's Shiny New Year or Rudolph and Frosty's Christmas in July.

My 2-year-old is watching it at the moment in the other room -- and it's September.

The lyrics to the songs are complex to the point that I wonder how the actors got through them without switching to their normal voices, but I thought they were quite good, despite that.

The animation is not up to Shrek's standards, but would we want it to be? Photo-realistic animation would just detract from the story. As it is, the animation reminds me enough of the original stop-motion so that this indeed feels like a sequel.

The voice acting is marvelous: Rudolph and Hermey sound like they did in the original, and the other actors drop neatly into place around them.

As commented earlier, this takes the characters forward, instead of just repeating the identical behaviors in a different plot.

So, see it. You may find it a waste of time, but it's very much a mileage-may-vary thing, rather than a this-is-a-waste-of-celluloid thing.

It has always amazed me that it took so long to see a sequel to the classic Rudolph animation. It took so long that the Hollywood world of 3D automated graphics took over as happens so often. This movie bore little resemblance to the original. It didn't even feel like Christmas. Seemed like they licensed the characters and just turned it over to a CGI house. Very poor. No plot, no interesting characters. What was the deal with the kite?? If I had bought this movie, I would have demanded my money back. Fortunately, we just checked it out at the library. This is the first time I've ever seen my 8 year old want to walk away from an animation!

Christmas is the worst time of year. kids whine if they don't get what they want for Christmas, "EC People" go to church for Christmas but don't really care about why Christmas is here in the first place, and Christmas themed programming infects the airwaves. every day you cannot go one minute without hearing jingle bells in a commercial or a bumper for "it's a wonderful life" or the original "Rudolph the red nosed reindeer." which are both great classics, but they air so much that you and your children can recite them line by line.

So, Rankin/Bass responded and made a sequel 37 years after the original creation, dubbed "The Island of misfit toys." and for a TV movie, it's pretty good, with a stellar voice cast, and a somewhat of a reprisal of Kathleen Barr doing Rudolph's voice (she did Rudolph's voice in the version with the sprites of the northern lights, and don't get me going on that version because you'll think i'm either the angry video game nerd ranting about some mid-90s low quality SNES game.)

Anyways, since Rudolph's original run back in the day, he lives a somewhat carefree life, with his deer-friend Clarice and his elf buddy Hermie. however, a mysterious creature called the toy taker, is, well, taking toys! so it's up to Rudolph to unmask the toy taker and of course, save the missing toys.

I originally saw this a few years after it's debut, on YTV, and i gotta say i liked it, and i still think it's a half-decent sequel, i mean, it could've been worse...but thank god it's nothing like that one Rudolph the red nose reindeer from 1998. if you want true criticism, check out my review of that one.

6 out of 10.

I will start by saying that my 4 year old son really does like this movie... that is the only positive point.

The animation is HORRIBLE - no texturing, very poor lighting, polygon intrusions, etc. Not even 2nd rate animation.

The music and songs are atrocious - I cannot believe that the writers actually allowed them to use their real names on this. Then again, composers cannot take a Smithy.

The characters have been tarnished, stained, battered and bruised - hopefully this movie will soon be forgotten and the original Rudolph will regain its former glory.

Best film ever, should have won all the Oscars of 2013. The plot is heartwarming if a little dreadful but there are no plot holes just a bit of stupid stuff. The romance between Rudolph and the female reindeer is the greatest love story since Twilight and the reindeers are far more attractive than Kristen Stewart and Cedric Diggory, but it is missing a good ol' shark boy. The emotion of the film is incredibkr. Throughout I swung from happy to sad to wanting to murder all the parents who didn't believe in Santa, but don't worry I managed to curb my urges and I only have two bodies in my freezer. The bad guy of this film is really on thanos levels of power. And the dynamic between him and the protagonist Rudolph is reminiscent of the brilliant performances shown in the dark Knight between batman and Batmans cape. The island of misfit toys is a brilliant location to shoot on, and visually it's really on par with Avatar, Blade Runner 2049, or even AQUAMAN!!!!!!!!!!!! I also genuinely could feel the emotion of the misfit toys who really felt abandoned which really resonated with me because once when I was 6 I had this balloon and I let go and it abandoned me and I've been scarred ever since. People often say that this generation are sheltered but nothing is being done to help those suffering from balloon related illnesses and it's really a disgrace, Donald Trump really needs to get his priorities in line.

This is an abomination to the entire film industry and a disgrace and insult to the original 1964 classic. The animation looks like some amateur bought a 'CGI For Dummies' book and made it on their home computer. Like other users remarked there is no texture to the images, the graphics look like something out of a cheap children's video game, in which the paper thin plot would have been more suitable for. Gosh, the 30 second AFLAC commercial that spoofed Rudolph had more production value than this 90 minutes of gutter trash! This had so much potential to be a decent sequel but greed, as always in modern movie making, killed it with a slapped together rush job all for the sake of capitalizing off the Rudolph franchise and the integrity of the original!

Rudolph travels to the island of misfit toys to help the elf dentist treat the lion toy. As they sail back they get caught in a storm and meet the Hippo Queen who offers to fix Rudolph's nose if he wants it done. While he is away The Toy Taker raids Santa's toy warehouse and takes all the toys. Rudolph sets out to find the Toy Taker and get all the toys back in time for Christmas by using the island of misfit toys as a trap to draw him out.

Dear Lord but this is one cheap nasty little cartoon! Ignore the actors listed in the cast list - just because they managed to pay a few big names for a day and a half's voice work doesn't mean this film is any good. The plot is a reasonable attempt to draw as many films out of Rudolph as possible and, on paper, is a reasonable sting operation but the delivery is awful and ruins anything that might have been called potential.

The godawful songs are part of the problem - they seem to happen after every few lines of dialogue all the way through. It makes it impossible to bear - it really is awful stuff. The animation is also pretty bad. That might seem a bit unfair considering it looks OK and is computer animation, but it is the sort of animation you get in cut scenes on average games on your PC. The camera moves very slowly, the characters cannot move very fast and none of them are lip-synched at all!

The fancy voices do nothing at all to improve it. Dreyfuss does some rubbish Snowman narrator but Jamie Lee Curtis dons a horrible accent to do a hippo queen! (was she trying to hide her identity from shame?). Moranis has an OK character visually but he does nothing with it and the absurd songs and voice only serve to the character of any menace he had before he spoke.

Overall I can only advise that you do not make the mistake that I made by watching this. No matter how demanding your children get, don't use this film to placate them - making them sit facing the wall for an hour would be preferable.

I have to say, I was very disappointed. I have a 4 year old son, who is just old enough to really understand movies when he watches them. I was so excited to show him the Christmas movies I enjoyed as a child. There are certain movies that are just classics. You just don't mess with them. They showed the 60s version of "The Year Without a Santa Claus" just prior to this and my son loved it. When this one came on, and was computer animated, and the story changed some, it devastated me. My son actually fell asleep watching this one. I think it would have been a decent movie if it weren't for the fact you just can't change something that people have been watching for decades. It just was NOT the same. Make a sequel if you want, but don't' change the old ones. After making episodes 1, 2, and 3, they did not go back and redo the original star wars trilogy. Learn from that!

This story could have been better. It seems well intentioned, especially the back story of Cuddles, and tries to offer a nice message. Technical blunders are so numerous, however, you could have a parlor game while watching this to see who can spot the most goofs.

The computer graphic animation is grossly cheap and awkwardly done to the extent it's actually distracting. Characters do not cast shadows. The size perspective of objects is not consistent. Colors are irregular. Movements by characters appear robotic. This last problem is actually cute when you see it in the stop-motion clay-mation of the original classic Rudolph, but it looks weird here. Even though there is effort to reconstruct the characters faithfully to their original design, the overall quality of visuals simply stink.

It tries to give us an update on each of the characters we met in the original, and to some extent, succeeds. Glaring problems exist with Rudolph's personal life though. Instead of getting older since Rudolph's original cartoon adventure took place, he and girl friend Clarisse have apparently been shrinking from young adults to about middle school age (whatever that is for reindeer!). Also, Rudolph has angst about being famous. Why? A "toy taker" rips off the North Pole toy cache, and it's up to Rudolph to catch the thief. On the way, he runs into a loud toy-repairing hippo who offers to zap his red nose into a normal color. Well, OK. Oh, and everybody sings a lot, but the songs are truly forgettable. The voice talents are successful at making the characters sound like they did in the 1964 cartoon.

Had potential, and even the confused production offers a few moments. Overall, this is a very long endeavor, especially for the smaller children.

Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer, the Rankin-Bass special made in 1964, is my favorite holiday special since I was a kid, with its memorable characters, soothing songs, and good storytelling. So imagine my shock when I saw this, a sequel.

Well, okay, Rudolph had two sequels before this (Rudolph's Shiny New Year and that crossover with Frosty The Snowman), but they basically replaced certain characters with new ones that fit the theme of the special. Here, Rudolph is back with Hermie, Yukon, Bumble and all the rest, now in the glory of early 2000's-era computer animation. A villain named the Toy-Taker is taking all the toys in the world, while Rudolph is unhappy with his fame, as after saving Christmas, he is being treated like a novelty act, considers getting his nose changed after he and Hermey end up on Castaway Cove, home of Queen Camila, who uses the island as a spa for toys to be repaired and cleaned.

The movie has a good voice cast, with the likes of Jamie Lee Curtis and Rick Moranis, as well as TV voice actors like Garry Chalk and Scott McNeil. Also, while this movie is neat, there are some flaws. One of the major ones is Rudolph and Clarice, as they are back in their younger selves, which contradicts events in the original, as they are adults near the end of the special. Also, there are some dumb ideas put in that will confound both man and beast (like Hermey having a crush on the Tooth Fairy) and some of the songs don't hold a candle to the ones in the original.

I wouldn't give this movie a second thought if it wasn't a connected to the original. The animation by itself is atrocious but compared to the original it's downright offensive. Clearly they had the budget for Richard Dreyfus, Jamie Lee Curtis and Rick Moranis but were too lazy to use stop-motion animation or at least decent CGI! I understand this is a kid's movie but that's no excuse to cut corners on animation. I wouldn't let my kids watch this lazy pitiful excuse for a movie!

This was a lot better than expected. The story does a great job of showing where the characters from the original are now. The songs were catchy and fun, a rare thing for other movies of this type. Entertaining film that is worth a watch, its down-right FUN!

This review may never be seen because at this time because this C-grade film is now 19 years old. Older than me who is now officially an adult and I would really like to voice my particular generations view. I adored this movie as a kid, my fondest memories was watching this for the first time on ABC and begging my mom to record it again the following years. After a while it stopped rerunning because as many users have established in the comments, the CGI was in its beginning phases back in the early 2000's and was really clunky to the eye. The plot itself is what I deem as an adult, subpar, at best, but I can still remember every tune to every song, the toy taker was genuinely eerie and a good character to redeem himself for his motives in the end. As a 5 year old watching this I was captivated by the crappy CGI that was not bad in my eyes, they were a visual form of explaining a messy plot that still had an effect on me as I grew older. Today I made a IMBD account to voice my nostalgic love for this movie in particular. This review may probably never see the light of day to anyone else and is probably lost to the ages but just know, to anyone out there who cares: This movie was a solid 7 because it was never meant for adults, it was meant for kids.

While this special will never measure up to the beloved "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" (can any special do that??) - it is fun to watch, especially if you are a fan of the original. Its nice to see all the characters from the Rankin/Bass classic come back and you can tell that whoever made this film paid a lot of attention to the original. This is much more than I can say for the other "Rudolph" film that came out a few years before this one or the abysmal "Frosty Returns"! The songs are hit-or-miss, some are pretty bad and some are quite good (for example the one that the Hippo sings). It also has a lot of heart and does capture the spirit of Romeo Mueller's heartwarming writing. The only major complaint I have is that this should really have been done in stop-motion puppet animation instead of cheap computer-animation which already looks dated only a few years after its release. I'm sure it would have garnered a much better response if it had been done in the same style of animation as its predecessor.

The movie starts with some over the top narration..I think Dryfus could have turned it down a few notches along with his evil looking snowman certainly not Burl Ives. The animation is like watching the WII bowling team...It is terrible. But I think the big crime here is the story line..It moves at the speed of snail and is way to long. This movie could have easily been cut down to 50 minutes.

All that said I was wondering if anyone caught the overtones. the female pig who needs a slot. The Zsa Zsa Gabor sexpot queen and Rudolf telling his girl friend she needs to earn her wings...

In all it's a slow moving, poorly animated movie that is way to long and is just odd to watch. It doesn't work even with the big names associated with the film.