Les 12 Chiens de Noël

I'm old, and I don't mind admitting it. I remember when family movies were made by Disney, and they had story lines that kids and parents could watch together without embarrassment or fear, and which were just plain old simple entertainment. Somehow somewhere along the track Hollywood slipped off the rails and decided that little kids needed to hear naughty words, and parents wouldn't take their kids to a show if they couldn't see some at least some implied sex. WRONG!!!

Kieth Merrill seems to have remembered. Here is a story where the bad guys are bad, but on a level that kids can cope with, and the good guys are good, but on a matching level. Folks like I know and live around. The protagonist boy and girl are nice kids, they don't kiss, they don't even get romantic. The school marm looks a bit like Lily Tomlin, and is just the right level of taught and nasty, and redeems herself at the end. The mayor is pompous and stuffy, and comes around in the end too.

It is all wonderful fluff, with dogs that behave a lot of the time, and don't, just enough of the time, to make the film extra believable. The camera work and acting are outstanding. I have no hesitation in recommending this film to any family anywhere for watching together as a family. Please buy it and thumb your nose at the "experts" in Hollywood who just don't "get" it that nice clean family fun like this is worth making, and has a market.

Every year there are several movies that pop up in stores that have the appearance of being quality family entertainment. Generally, most of them are disappointing at best. To my surprise, "The 12 Dogs of Christmas" isn't among the disappointments, though it does have its share of flaws.

Young Emma's father leaves her with her aunt in a small town that has just outlawed dogs. In an act of heroism, she rescues a puppy from the town's maniacal dogcatcher, and finds that she has a deep-rooted for canines. Along the way, she befriends the town's supposedly crazy "dog lady" and her son, as well as the local coach, a Russian dog-sledder and her initially angry aunt. In the process, she also makes enemies of the mean-spirited dogcatcher and his brother, the town's mayor. Yes, some of the characters are cookie-cutter, and the results are more than predictable. However, the movie uses the characters' -- and the viewers' -- love for dogs to bring about some very warm and pleasant results.

After viewing, we realized we enjoyed this movie enough to add this DVD to our holiday collection. I recommend it in the best spirit of a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

'The 12 Dogs of Christmas' is nothing amazing, one that will be forgotten, but it's relatively decent - given it's a low standard festive film.

The plot is the standout part, although they don't quite nail the story as much as they could've; the ending really dragged out. Acting is OK, certainly better than a lot of its counterparts.

This review is all over the place.

The film is seriously awful. I can't believe that anyone who didn't not the cast or live in the town could find this anything more.

I found it exploitive - it didn't exploit dogs directly but those who may chose to watch this because of the dogs. Who knew you could be more exploitive than Disney? Or have a final worse than the CBC? Maybe you, not me.

The acting was poor with the exception of "The Dog Lady", the quality of the filming was as poor and the dog fights were so unbelievably unrealistic (thankfully so) to make this nothing but turgid and make me nothing but angry.

The title of this movie is very inviting for one to come up with a negative title for a review. I'll leave that for anyone else and just tackle the major flaws of "The 12 Dogs of Christmas". The idea for the plot comes from a 1998 32-page children's book of the same title by Emma Kragen. So, the screenplay would pretty much be an original story with characters not included or barely sketched in the book. And, this screenplay is very weak. But for a couple of very odd characters along with a couple more who are very hammy, this movie would be very dull. Yet, combined with very wooden or forced acting by most of the cast, it soon makes this video film boring.

It's not at all hard to get the conclusion, so one looks for and waits for some good performances in a good story to get to the end. But this film made for video release just falls flat all around. While there may be some sentimental heartstrings for people who love dogs, for this reviewer who likes and has had dogs, this picture just doesn't even present much by way of cuddly, warm, or fuzzy attachments to dogs.

With the characters in this film - notably Aunt Delores, Dogcatcher Doyle and Mayor Doyle, it struck me that the producers may have been trying to imitate the early Disney comedies with Fred MacMurray - "The Shaggy Dog" of 1959 or "The Absent-Minded Professor" of 1961. But most of the comedy turns out to be overly hammy acting rather than any real humor. The producers couldn't seem to make up their minds - did they want a comedy, or a drama, or a combination? With the comedy pretty much limited to some very hammy personas, what drama there may have been hoped for never gets developed. The goofy behavior of the dogcatcher and his accomplice never leads to any mistreatment or abuse of the dogs, and most of the time when one sees dogs, they are wagging their tales, trying to lick someone's hand or just lying down or standing and looking at people.

There is one instance of a serious matter that the film might have delved into a bit more for dramatic effect, but that was even glossed over quickly. That was the dogcatcher selling dogs from the pound for dog fights. The last aspect that shows this film to be below what in the days of the studios would have been a "B" film, is the acting. The lead character, Emma O'Conner could have been replaced by a real puppet on strings, her acting is so wooden. She is mostly expressionless and lifeless throughout the film, having most often a look with just a slight smile or upturn of her mouth.

Susan Wood as Cathy Stevens is just fair when she, too, doesn't seem wooden. Eric Lutes as Coach Cullimore has a little bit of a nutty professor persona, neither serious nor funny, but not quite believable as a coach and teacher. The four hammy characters aren't always that way. The rest of the time they, too seem wooden, or forced. The one character who passes in this regard is Richard Riehle aa Mayor Nobel Doyle, and that's because he's the only recognizable member of this cast who has played some other roles as similar characters, and had more than 400 acting credits before 2020. About the only role that showed some able acting was that of the boy, Mike Steven, played by Adam Hick.

Some reviewers have said this film is dreadful, and after waiting impatiently for it to end, I has some of the same sense. But I give it three stars for the production effort in the set, costumes and scenery that did give it a feel of the early 1930s during the Great Depression.