Rapsittie Street Kids: Believe in Santa
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 Spoiler Alert: Don’t believe in this film.
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Rapsittie Street Kids: Believe in Santa, or Rapsittie Street Kids, is a musical CGI Christmas TV movie from Wolf Tracer Studios Inc. and J Rose Productions and directed by Colin Slater that aired on The WB on December 8, 2002. It was never aired again after that due to its negative reception. As a result, it was lost for 13 years, until Dycaite, owner and founder of the Lost Media Wiki, managed to secure a copy from the director, Colin Slater, who charged him twice for it and tried to claim he "didn't own the film".
Synopsis
Nicole, a spoiled and cynical girl, receives a teddy bear as a gift from her classmate Ricky. Nicole sees no value in the bear and trashes it. When she learns the sentiments behind the gift and the "true meaning of Christmas", Nicole and her friends attempt to hunt down the trashed stuffed animal, before it's too late.
Why You Shouldn't Believe in This Special and It's Not the True Meaning of Christmas
- Very appalling, awful, and dreadful animation quality, especially the characters' movements. This is due to the animation software they used, 3D Choreographer, an already outdated software from 1992.
- The camera movements and angles are very inconsistent and jerky.
- The characters also seem to be green-screened rather than animated on to the background.
- The lip-syncing is very poor due to the awful character designs.
- The character models are blocky and look unfinished with awkward, creepy facial expressions and faces made of angular, jumbled polygons, and their design. Their movements make them look like rejected background characters from Baldi's Basics in Education and Learning. The backgrounds also look ugly and some background elements are pasted in a two-dimensional clipart.
- There are multiple glaring animation errors:
- There are numerous clipping and layering issues with the character models. Arms and legs frequently clip through bodies or objects. This is especially notable in Nicole's Look at Me, where her upper body often clips her forearms right through her torso, during the song.
- Various lighting issues on character models.
- In one scene, Lenee’s father blinks, and his eyelids appear to be transparent.
- In another scene, Lenee's legs clip through her skirt, when she walks.
- In the opening scene, one scene shows all of the students disembarking from a school bus from a normal, albeit poorly rendered 3D background. The next scene shows the same event, in an even worse 2D background, with the students moving unrealistically fast.
- Also in the opening scene, when Ricky walks, his feet continuously dip past the ground.
- In many scenes, when one character moves, the others stand frozen in place.
- When the characters walk in the snow, they leave no footprints.
- The circular objects in the movie barely even look like circles, and more like flat cut-outs, showing some extreme inexperience, since spheres should be the easiest things to render.
- Many background elements are pixelated, and you can even see the white lines from where they were cut out.
- On the school marquee, the word, “excellence”, is misspelled with one, "L", instead of two.
- In the scene where a letter flies in the air, it moves more like a screensaver.
- Terrible and nonexistent direction. According to one of the animators, Colin Slater gave little to no actual direction during production, and would only look at the progress once in a while, and say, "that's good, keep going." Slater also apparently never saw the finished project, until he watched the premiere on television.
- Who is the main character? It seems as if the movie can't decide who should be the main protagonist. Sometimes it's Ricky, sometimes it's Nicole.
- The movie has an unoriginal "believing-in-Santa" storyline that is typical of many Christmas movies.
- Terrible dialogue, especially the infamous "I'm ready to skate bigger and faster than my mom can make the biggest sandwich in the world!" line.
- Misleading title: It's about believing in Santa Claus, but the character questioning his existence isn't even the main character, and the story is mostly about Nicole realizing the true meaning of Christmas.
- Also, the title of the film is called Rapsittie Street Kids, yet only one character, Ricky, raps throughout the movie, so the title and rapping are entirely pointless.
- Speaking of which, Ricky’s raps are obnoxious.
- Also, the title of the film is called Rapsittie Street Kids, yet only one character, Ricky, raps throughout the movie, so the title and rapping are entirely pointless.
- A lot of unlikeable characters:
- Smithy has a stereotypical "girls are icky" personality and constantly mocks Nicole and Lenee for being female. This can send out the wrong message.
- Nicole is portrayed as being a snotty, self-centered, and arrogant teenage blonde girl, who sees herself as "perfect" in every possible way, making her a Mary Sue. She's at her worst when Ricky gives her his beloved teddy bear as a present to her; she just angrily scolds him for it and throws it away, which is very mean-spirited of her to do that, so we can also claim that she's another one of those cliched mean popular girls.
- If that wasn't enough, she also made fun of her best friend Lenee all because she still believes in Santa, which left the latter walk off depressed. This can make her arguably the worst character in the film.
- Also, she also had rushed character development: When she read Ricky's letter to Santa, she instantly became nice. To quote Mr. Enter: "That's not how character development works!"
- If that wasn't enough, she also made fun of her best friend Lenee all because she still believes in Santa, which left the latter walk off depressed. This can make her arguably the worst character in the film.
- Bizarre and horrible ending which doesn't fit at all in a Christmas movie: It ends with a terrible line: "Shut that door!"
- The musical numbers are unbearable, the most notable being Nicole's "Best Kid in the World", which mainly consists of her standing still in front of a mirror, and vaguely flailing her arms. They're also oddly placed, with the first only turning up halfway through the special, unless one counts Ricky's rapping, but their combined length doesn't even add up to half of the length of "Best Kid in the World".
- Numerous continuity and plot holes that are extremely noticeable.
- In one scene, Nicole laughs and makes fun of Lenee for still believing in Santa Claus but a few minutes later during her "Look at Me" musical number, she joyfully sings about how Santa is the "best guy in the world" and how he's going to bring her presents.
- In another scene where Ricky is writing a letter to Santa Claus, he uses a candle for light even though it's broad daylight outside.
- Loads of filler in scenes that go nowhere and add nothing to the plot.
- In one scene, one of the bullies, Zeke, harasses a girl; when she tells Ms. Parmington, she says that it means he "likes" her, which sends out the wrong message.
- Poor voice direction, even from veteran actors such as Mark Hamill, who only gets eight lines, and Nancy Cartwright, who somehow got a producer role.
- The children characters’ ages are confusing because they go to elementary school, but they deal with crushes, which is something children in high school deal with.
Redeeming Qualities
- Some unintentionally funny moments, such as when Smithy tackles one of the bullies, as well as Ricky's great-grandmother's voice lines.
- Some likable characters, like Ricky and Lenee.
- When Nicole rejects Ricky’s gift, Ricky gets a surprisingly good line, “I get you a real gift, and you don’t get it.” Some awkward visuals accompany the line, but it's still great regardless.
- At least Nicole has a change of heart halfway through the special, despite her rushed character development.
- The animation can be considered by some people to be hilariously bad.
- While the musical numbers are unbearable, the singing voice of Nicole, provided by Paige O'Hara, the voice of Belle from Beauty and the Beast, is still good.
- The end credits sound godly.
Reception and Legacy
Rapsittie Street Kids: Believe in Santa has become infamous among fans of bad films. Ever since it aired on television, it received extremely negative reviews from critics and audiences and has been repeatedly noted for its "hideous" and ugly computer animation and bizarre production history, though the ensemble voice cast received some praise.
Trivia
- The movie was going to get an Easter-themed sequel called Rapsittie Street Kids: A Bunny's Tale. During the end credits, Lenee's little sister Jenna says, "Don't forget to see me in The Bunny's Tale!" but due to the movie's poor reception, it got canceled.
- The poor-quality animation was likely a result of spending almost the entire $500,000 budget on voice actors and not outsourcing the animation, although according to the producer’s daughter, it might’ve been a scam from Slater.
- Slater has a low-budget animation studio called Wolf Tracer that also made Wolf Tracer's Dinosaur Island
- According to one producer's daughter, Grandma wasn't supposed to speak the way she does; as it appears to be a result of using corrupted audio recording files, and not bothering to check the result, however, her voice actress did eventually reveal, "great grandma is disheveled, she can't put words together, like she used to.", proving this theory false.
- Some of the cast and crew are ashamed of the movie. The producer's daughter called the film, "her dad's biggest disappointment". Paige O'Hara joked that she was surprised someone remembered the special, and Mark Hamill states that he doesn’t even remember the process of the film, and supposedly, Grey DeLisle will block anyone who mentions the film on her Twitter account.
- In 2015, the film had been found after being lost for 13 years.
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