12 cani sotto l'albero

My daughter absolutely loves animal movies, especially with dogs. The story seemed very interesting when me and my daughter read the info on the TV before watching. I was very unimpressed. From the very first five minutes of the movie, I wanted to change the station because of how unengaged I was. I made the dumb decision to keep watching, hoping it would get better. Dumb idea. It seemed to do nothing but get worse and worse! The acting completely ruined the movie. The actors sounded like they were just reading the lines off the script. There was no emotion what so ever, which is very strange considering the story line is very dramatic and emotional. The whole thing felt scripted and fake. I feel like I completely wasted 90 minutes of my life. I would not recommend this to anyone.

The cast looks like it's full of a bunch of relatives of the casting agent. I love Christmas movies, but this is just B-A-D enough to compel me to write this review.

The main boy is a "lovable" foster kid, Jack, assigned to community service at a pet shelter run by 3 young girls -- not sure where the adults are. He has "anger" issues and a crush on the older sister of an equally angry redhead names Ryan. Jack is not only a terrible actor, he is clearly gay which wouldn't matter if they weren't trying to make a heterosexual love connection. To be clear, he isn't the only bad actor. The whole cast is terrible except for the probation officer. I'm not sure if is just the acting or the directing as well.

The movie is about 2 dysfunctional teens working together to get a bunch of misfit dogs adopted before Christmas. The "misfit" dogs are actually quite cute. If you can put up with the bad acting and you like dogs, maybe it's worth a look.

Really,such bad acting. The dogs were adorable (that's why it's not a one star) and you could tell they tried. They're the reason I kept watching. The humans were ridiculous. How does that even happen? It's like the script was written the night before and the high school drama club would have done a much better job. It could have been a wonderful movie and I hope someone rewrites it and either gives the actors more time to learn the lines...extra takes when they screw up and let them/hope they can...get into their characters more. I'm not all the way through it yet and I certainly hope everything works out perfectly at the end...that IS protocol for these movies after all.

The plot itself is cute enough, however the bad acting and bad soundtrack outweighs the pros of the movies

The good news first, the dogs are adorable (and I'm a cat person). That's where the good news ends. Even by the high held standards of made for TV Christmas movies this is pretty bad. Just concentrate on the dogs. They're adorable.