12 Dogs of Christmas: Great Puppy Rescue (2012) Reviews

• Puppy love

  Prismark102015-01-12

  12 Dogs of Christmas: The Great Puppy Rescue is a sequel to the 2005 Depression era film 12 Dogs of Christmas. The film is set six years after the original film, it still has a 1930s setting. Dog lover Emma (Danielle Chuchran) returns to her home town for a funeral. Her friend is seriously injured in a car accident and becomes paralysed. Finneas James (Sean Patrick Flanery) the rich arch villain wants to close down the home for dogs, Emma races to put up a Christmas extravaganza to raise funds but Finneas conspires to put them off course, by pressurising the theatre to withdraw his support and even threatening the dog's lives with a fire. The film is squarely aimed at children who will find the puppies cute and enter the spirit of the Christmas show which has an actor portraying Bing Crosby entertaining to raise funds. The villain is two dimensional and hiss able, it tries to capture the spirit of the High School Musical films but does not really succeed. I was not always convince with it as a period piece as there were too many modern mannerisms for my liking. It was also too low budget, you can tell with the green/blue screen and also slightly overlong. However the kids would enjoy this film during the Christmas holidays.

• Not so good

  aharder232018-12-25

  We caught this movie on tv this weekend. It was all over the place. Somehow, even though it takes place in the 1930's, kids were wearing Chuck Taylor shoes, a band member had an afro, and there was a rap break during a pageant hosted by an actor portraying Bing Crosby. The pageant was to save a home for wayward children and dogs, although nobody seemed to care about the children who would be displaced & it was all about the dogs. Oh, and somehow there was a magic hero horse residing on this property as well. Amazingly for a basic film, there was way too much to absorb. It was like Full House had a drunken one night stand with High School Musical and then had an unwanted Swing Kids baby, who ironically would've been sent to the home for wayward children and dogs. So...circle of life?