YMMV / The Christmas Light

• Accidental Innuendo: The dialogue in both movies (though particularly in Brigade) is peppered with so many That Came Out Wrong moments that it's difficult to tell whether the dialogue was just that ineptly written or the innuendoes are less accidental than we think:
  • "AND YOU WILL RUE THE DAY THAT YOU HAD YOUR WAY WITH ME!!"
  • The name of the main villain in Brigade is "Dr. D". What more really needs to be said?
    Phelous: Dr. D? Really?! That's it, I'm gonna flag this movie for being inappropriate!
  • Pretty much everything Dr. D himself says, really, not helped by that name.
    Dr. D.: Let me show you where I'll put it!
• Alternate Character Interpretation:
  • Burton in the first movie before his Heel–Face Turn: An egotistical and rude Insufferable Genius who is rightfully not taken seriously by the other elves? Or a Jerkass Woobie who only wants to prove himself to the other elves and his boss but is unfairly ostracized and bullied by them, with their relentless bullying leading to Burton finally snapping and deciding to bite back at them after he becomes the snowman?
  • In his reviews of both movies, Phelous suggests multiple times that Isaac is a secretly evil Bitch in Sheep's Clothing due to Isaac immediately jumping to killing Burton in Light before Jennifer stops he and Santa from doing so (and Isaac sounding disappointed as he calls X the robot back) and the sheer lack of resistance Isaac shows when being captured and brainwashed by Dr. D in Brigade. Not to mention, Dr. D's Utility Belt looking exactly the same as the one Isaac invented a few minutes back.
• Ass Pull:
  • The Christmas Light practically runs on these. Why exactly does falling into his own toy machine turn Burton into the snowman? And his redemption comes off as more of a Deus ex Machina than anything else.
  • Brigade is no better; a number of times the characters just instantly get out of trouble with no explanation for it besides citing the Christmas Light.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The singing beetles that a shrunken Santa meets in Brigade.
• Broken Aesop: The intended moral of the story seems to be that everyone has the capability to be a good person and friendship can help bring out the best in people, but it falls flat in a number of ways due to how ineptly the story is written. The biggest way is the fact that story indicates that Burton was the one who learned this lesson when the story's circumstances would make it more appropriate for the other characters sans Jennifer to learn said lesson since they were the ones who caused Burton to go bad in the first place by always bullying him for reasons never stated. On top of that, the Brigade doesn't try even once to get Dr. D to learn this lesson in the sequel, even after he's defeated.
• Designated Hero: Santa and Isaac come off as real jerks here; the narration makes a point of mentioning that Burton is ostracized by Isaac and the other elves and the jolly old elf himself comes off as apathetic at best to Burton. Then later after Burton transforms into the snowman, Isaac and Santa not only don't seem to care that this happened to Burton but seem to have no qualms whatsoever about outright killing him, and are only prevented from doing so by Jennifer.
• Ending Fatigue: Brigade continues for over half an hour after the main conflict is resolved.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Doctor D's ship, the Dart, resembles the Delano 7.
  • When Isaac enters the Dart, Dr. D exclaims: "Isaac! What an unexpected surprise!" Sounds like something another "Dr. D" would say, especially since the tone of this quote makes him sound Isaac was totally expected. Bonus points for the fact that both of them have attempted to shrink and collect the world's landmarks.
• Inferred Holocaust: As Phelous pointed out in his review, the snowstorm Burton caused may very well have killed multiple people.
• Memetic Molester: Dr. D, due to a combination of his name, his pedo-stache, and some very unfortunate dialogue choices.
• Memetic Mutation: AND YOU WILL RUE THE DAY THAT YOU HAD YOUR WAY WITH ME!!!
• Narm: Pretty much everything for one reason or another. Some highlights include:
  • Burton's melodramatic rant over being rejected by Santa, particularly the lyrical way in which he speaks it and the fact that he falls down and seemingly explodes once he's finished. The fact that it comes off like a little kid throwing a temper tantrum really doesn't help.
  • Santa and Isaac's summation over Burton's apparent death, due to the Dull Surprise acting that makes them sound completely indifferent toward it.
  • Any time the characters use their "special gadgets" in the second movie, due to it coming off as an excuse to simply have the characters instantly pop from one location to another or even clip through walls rather than simply animating them walking or otherwise travelling to other places. A special mention goes to Isaac flying to Dr. D's ship, where he, in order, floats through the top of Sled 2 in a static position, flies toward Dr. D's ship in as good of a Superman pose as he can muster without his character model breaking, and flies sideways through the wall of the doctor's ship in a standing position as if he were in a "heard you were talking shit" reaction gif.
  • The confrontation between Santa and Dr. D in Santa's office in the second movie as well, with Santa's lines seemingly implying that he's supposed to be furious with Dr. D over what the doctor is doing, including brainwashing Isaac. However, Santa's voice actor doesn't sound like he could be bothered to give off his dialogue in anything but a flat monotone voice in what was apparently supposed to be a serious scene.
• Padding: The movies are very obviously padded out to fit under the run time with scenes that are drawn out as long as possible. While it's not so bad with the first movie since it's only 22 minutes, the second movie is an outright pain to sit through due to the film blatantly not having enough material to fill more than 70 minutes and filling it in with random and irrelevant sequences that have nothing to do with anything.
• So Bad, It's Good: It has the same hilariously kitschy and inept charm that made movies like The Christmas Tree and Rapsittie Street Kids: Believe in Santa classics. Mind you, this really only applies to the first movie as the second movie is generally considered nigh-unwatchable.
• Special Effects Failure:
  • The characters' arms have a tendency to suddenly seize up at random points throughout both movies for one thing.
  • The above-mentioned clipping and phasing through walls in Brigade. Even with the in-universe justification it comes off as lazy.
• Took the Bad Film Seriously: While the voice-acting of the other characters is otherwise absolutely awful, Jamie Norton/Horton as Burton is an odd exception. It's a downplayed example to be sure, as he is very obviously hamming it up like there's no tomorrow and not even his heart seems to be fully in it in Brigade, but that being said, at the very least he still puts far more emotion into his acting than anyone else does (sometimes to a fault, as Burton's childish and overwrought tantrum will attest to).
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: The first movie's failure to portray Burton for the Jerkass he supposedly is while making a point of mentioning that the other elves ostracize and bully him, along with Santa and Isaac's apparent lack of concern for Burton's well-being until Burton returns to normal, make Burton come off more like a Jerkass Woobie who only acts like a jerk because nobody treats him well and making his motives as the Snowman seem motivated by paying back Santa and the other elves for treating him poorly more than anything else.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Santa and Isaac could very well be blamed for everything that happens in Light, and the story holding them up as heroes throughout the movie just doesn't take because of it. The narrator outright states that Isaac and the other elves bully Burton and call Burton names behind his back, and Santa doesn't seem to do anything about the bullying nor does he try to treat Burton well either. They don't even seem to care that Burton has become the snowman, and Santa outright states that he and Isaac would have killed Burton had Jennifer not been there to hold them back. At the end of the story, Burton accepts that Santa and Isaac were his friends and were only trying to help him...which is blatantly not true as, again, Santa and Isaac almost killed him, and before all this happened they didn't even treat him like a friend in the first place. Combined with the fact that the reason nobody likes Burton is largely an Informed Flaw and you've got two protagonists who are simply not as worth rooting for as the story presents them to be.

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