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 plot of the movie was actually so good! Really cute and heartwarming, telling the story of a troubled teen that gets a new perspective through court ordered juvenile probation and community service.

However, the script, the production, and much of the acting was really bad. B rating at best. A lot of the blocking was off, the angle the scenes were filmed felt homemade, and some of the lines were truly cringe. I feel the story would do very well remake and a higher budget to get experienced director and production team.

I would watch again for the story but I will definitely be cringing through some of it.

My wife and I had a blast watching this terrible movie. How did that kid get the main role? Who wrote this? The entire movie is 1000 "touching scenes" over and over. Can't believe I watched this entire movie. Holy crap it's bad!!!

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.

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.