“Digging in the dumpster! Do you think they take credit cards?”

Justin’s rating: What’s the shortcut to format the hard drive this sits on?

Justin’s review: Every year for Culty Christmas, I try to give to y’all one monumentally notable title that is either famous, infamous, or both. And for 2023, it’s dipping into the well of one of the most notorious CGI Christmas movies ever made, Rapsittie Street Kids: Believe in Santa.

While this is a relative newcomer on the internet scene, having only been unearthed in 2015, Rapsittie Street Kids is positively legendary in the Christmas special field. It’s a fever dream of an animated flick that was produced for a half-million bucks, made with some notable voice talent — Nancy Cartwright, Mark Hamill, Clint Howard, Paige O’Hara, Jodi Benson — and actually broadcast on The WB in Christmas of 2002 to the horror of absolutely everyone involved.

The thing is, this special could’ve been, if not good, then passable. Animation guru and producer Colin Slater pulled all sorts of strings to assemble high-profile voice talent and song writers, many of whom were known from the Disney Renissance, and got Warner Bros to approve it all. Then, to make a very long saga short, the project was farmed out to a couple hardworking animators saddled with a subpar Windows 3.1 software suite and an insanely tight deadline.

They got the movie done in time, against all odds. Their plucky can-do spirit in the face of everything that was stacked against them is the special sauce that ended up making this cult. It’s terrible, but it’s terrible made with heart.

Still, the clunky, misshapen, stilted end product was so objectively bad to the level of dollar store DVD bin. And yet The WB, being on the hook for this thing, aired it anyway. As the story goes, the movie got buried after that until some internet hero bribed, cajoled, and wheeled a copy out of Slater a decade later.

There’s an amazing dissonance that a viewer experiences when you sit down to watch Rapsittie Street Kids. If you showed me this without any of the above context, I would’ve told you that this was either some grade school kid’s extra credit project or an elaborate gag video from an attention-starved YouTuber. It’s entirely possible that with enough time and determination, you could make this in MS Paint.

What I’m trying to say is that however bad you think this looks, when you watch it, you’ll realize you’re wrong. Proportions are all over the place, characters slide around as they walk, backgrounds are made with muddy sprites, polygons are sharp enough to cut to the bone, and the people themselves are peak uncanny valley terrifying. This all might be the hell that Toy Story characters fear they might be sent to if they don’t clean up their act.

Yet while the visuals are drenched in sixth-rate ability, what I’m hearing isn’t the worst. It’s not the best, mind you, but it’s hard to have Luke Skywalker, Ariel, Belle, and Bart Simpson and mess up too badly. The music is even acceptable for children’s fare.

There is a pretty glaring exception to the voice work, however, which is a grandma who garbles her lines so badly that you don’t know what she’s trying to say half the time. As a result, she gets the biggest (unintended) laughs whenever she appears to mumble and jitter her way through a scene.

Our hero is Rick E, an orphan who raps, decorates Christmas trees by juggling ornaments onto them, and figures that he should declare his love to Nicole by giving her the teddy bear that his dead mom left to him. In response to the latter, bratty rich girl Nicole — who is so obsessed with the mall as her main character trait that she works it into every insult — harshly rejects the gift by throwing it in the trash.

Dejected, Rick E writes Santa about the tragedy. This letter somehow ends up in Nicole’s possession, and she has an about-face about what a dolt she’s been. There’s a quest to find Rick E’s bear and defeat a few dogs along the way. Everyone learns a weird lesson, and the audience is flabbergasted as to what they just witnessed.

The fact that this actually aired is the supreme cherry that makes Rapsittie Street Kids so delightful. I would’ve loved to have seen the reactions to viewers who had no idea what they were in for when they tuned into this back in 2002. My consolation prize is to look at myself in the mirror as I endured every awful minute of this instead.

Intermission!

• Comic Sans: The font of champion movies!
• Three coins can’t buy any generic toys
• “You gave me this bear cuz of love, so I’ll give this bear cuz of love!”
• “Hey Ricky, hang ten!”
• Ms…. Parmington?
• I love how bone-weary this teacher is of her over-acting kids
• “I didn’t think it could get any colder out here.”
• Give Smithy back his sandwich!
• Rick E wants a “video box” and writes letters by the light of a single candle since he’s too poor to afford lights
• I refuse to believe that grandma’s voice garbling was a deliberate choice and not a technology issue. But it’s a beautiful mess.
• “I love creepin’ out creepy girls!”
• Those guard dogs are the tiniest, least intimidating things
• Junkyards have 16 broken cars and one toilet
• THE AMAZING FOOD THROWING SCENE
• That girls’ bedroom is one bed, one desk, and about 8,000 square feet of empty real estate
• Santa is… a cloud?
• He got a Videobox!
• Is that a real pony or a toy? Good luck figuring it out with this level of animation.
• It’s Santa’s silhouette, wow!