Les 12 Chiens de Noël 2

Yes, of course this is a formula holiday movie, with the usual techniques and problems.

Danielle Ryan delivers an outstanding performance. She is so appealing and intelligent and determined, and what a smile.

Heather Beers is one of the other standouts as the mysterious and wonderful Zoe.

And, of course, the dancers and singers do an amazing job. Some of them are very young. And the cheerleaders are outstanding.

Only two or three lines, but Danor Gerald as the conductor makes a real impression as a caring man.

If you like dogs (I don't) there are a few that really stand out, and some that people who like dogs will just say are cute.

I can't say everyone does a good job acting.

Alexis Baigue (yes, apparently that's a man) seems too corny to be convincing as the Bing Crosby we all know and love. And yet he's appealing enough. And a fabulous singer. He has a bigger role than you might expect.

I've heard great things about Sean Patrick Flanery, and he does make Finneas quite evil, but there's just something missing from his performance. My first impression was he's someone in a bad disguise doing a bad accent, failing in his attempt to convince people he was someone he was pretending to be. The writing accomplishes what it is supposed to, but he never really improves. And no one else in this movie is from the South, so why the terrible Southern accent?

This is an inspiring story with the usual formula, and yet this movie gets everything done quite spectacularly. Well, almost.

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.

'12 Dogs of Christmas 2: The Great Puppy Rescue' is on a similar level as the preceding production, though I hold more issues with this one.

Sequels are always less watchable when the cast changes, as it does here. It's an alright film, though has a real lack of dogs in it given the title/plot. A few of the characters were also pretty pointless.

A follow-up wasn't necessary, especially given the seven year gap between the two.

This is a fine film for most kids, but there are sad/stressful bits so they need to be able to handle that. The spirit of the movie is community and doing your bit to support others, so in that sense it sets a good example. It is a bit educational with some references to the era of 1937, but the music and make up etc are definitely not 100% right for the time, which is a bit irritating. There are a lot of elements packed in, so something for many interests eg dogs, baseball, theatre/movies, cheerleading, horses, classic vehicles etc. This sequel does refer to the first movie, but we haven't seen that and everything still made sense.