VetteRanger

The fact that only 31% of "professional" movie critics "get" this movie just underscores my low opinion of movie critic intelligence.

The movie had us frequently laughing, and mostly at Dwayne Johnson's straight lines in response to entirely ridiculous events.

The movie's universe is rich and complicated. As an author, I'd love to write books in it. I understand that Amazon saw this as the start of a holiday acton/adventure franchise, and I hope they stick with the idea. After all, the film was originally conceived as a Prime Video draw. While it didn't make it's budget back at the box office, every dollar made at the box office has to be a bonus when it was never intended for theatrical release to begin with.

Very highly recommended.

This is another Hallmark movie where the writers went all over the place with their various story tropes.

Did they want a funny dog movie? Well, they started out that way and then abandoned that idea.

Did they want an old girlfriend shows up to threaten the romance? They did that too, but killed any tension from it immediately.

Did they want a tense story about a broken person? Well, the female lead was a doctor who lost a patient and ran from the profession, but that's really only important for the scene where she admits that.

Did they want a heart wrenching dog story? They hinted at that then never got there.

The male lead is fairly wooden, except for a couple of scenes where he suddenly goes from wooden to berserk, and he didn't manage the transitions well.

It's watchable, and the dogs are well-trained and the best part of the movie. And women may like the male lead's abs, which they put on display in one scene just for that purpose. We won't be viewing it again.

These writers took an exciting and interesting concept and made it blah, plus managed to break their own plot.

The concept for this film came from a real story many years ago where a guy started with a paper clip and wound up with a house. It was a pretty crummy little house, but still a house. He did it over the course of only fourteen trades taking a year.

Here a woman wants to start with a Christmas stocking and wind up with a house in ten days, by Christmas.

The story of the trades could have been exciting and memorable, but they aren't. I said they broke their own plot. How? After the second trade, a reporter covering the story actually starts deciding on the trades and surprising her with them.

The acting is blah, the dialogue has nothing with any real personality, and it takes a long time in story days between each trade.

Searh for the Wikipedia article "one red paperclip" to get the sequence of trades in the real story.