[1.0/10] It’s not surprising to me that something like this exists. I’m sure there’s scores of student projects and amateur attempts that match this special in terms of quality. What’s baffling is that these 42 minutes aired on a major network, featured the vocal talents of two Disney princesses and some of the best voice actors in the world, and had a closing song sung by the guy who did pop versions of the *Beauty and the Beast* theme. It’s not surprising that something this bad exists. It’s surprising that something with the stamp of approval from The WB and so many skilled people involved is this abjectly terrible.

I don’t even know how to critique this, because to critique is to note things that are working and areas where things could be improved. But nothing about *Believe in Santa* works, and I have no idea how you could improve it. It is just terrible to the core, and the only way to improve it would be to flush it out of the airlock.

The graphics are terrible looking, but considering it was made in 3D Choreographer, that’s no shock. There’s zero charm or humanity in these awkward, blocky characters, and I feel for the animators who were basically handed a dollar store paint set and told to produce the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Maybe that even accounts for some of the awkward editing choices, with overlong walk cycles and strange poses for everyone.

But it doesn’t account for the barely-there story, the awkwardly-staged scenes, the horrible songs, and the awful line-reads. If you squint, there’s a vague tale of Ricky liking a girl and changing her heart through his earnestness, and of Lenee deciding it’s right to believe in Santa Claus. But there’s zero progression or logic to these stories, events just kind of pile up on one another on top of some truly terrible songs. (The one exception is the closing “From the Eyes of a Child” tune that plays over the end credits, which isn’t good, but at least sounds professional.)

The plotting is nonexistent. The dialogue sounds like no one involved in the production had spoken to an actual human being before. The character interactions make no sense. The efforts at rapping are cringe-worthy. And the thing is just an eyesore to look at. Nothing about this works. It looks like it was made as an end-of-semester project by a crop of middle schoolers who’d never made T.V. before, and yet it features the voices of Bart Simpson and Luke Skywalker and The Little Mermaid.

That is baffling. There’s a level of misfire here that you rarely see get past the quality control department of major networks. However desperate for content the WB may have been in 2002, it would have done better to show static for an hour than to associate itself with such a poorly-made, ramshackle special.