Saturday, December 26, 2009

The 12 Dogs of Christmas

This is one of the Christmas movies we watched yesterday, and it turned out to be pretty good. It’s set in 1931 and is about a girl from Pittsburgh whose father has to send her to live with her “aunt” (really an old girlfriend) in a small town that has a local ordinance against dogs. Naturally the girl winds up with an adorable dog and makes friends with a family that provides a “dog orphanage” just outside the town limits. The mayor’s brother is the dogcatcher and rides around in a motorcycle sidecar while his assistant drives the motorcycle. There’s a lot of mild danger and adventure and plenty of cute little kids and dogs.

This is a family-friendly movie, very sweet and heart-warming and inspirational, but the Depression-era setting is portrayed in an appropriately dark and gritty manner. The cast, all of whom were unfamiliar to me except for character actors John Billingsley and Richard Riehle, does a good job, and the period detail is good with one exception: I don’t think the football term “Hail Mary pass” had been coined in 1931. That’s a pretty minor quibble, though.

Since Christmas is over, you probably won’t want to run out and find a copy of THE 12 DOGS OF CHRISTMAS. But next year, if you want to watch a decent little holiday movie you probably haven’t seen before, you should keep it in mind.

4 comments:

Laurie Powers said...

thanks for the review. I'm always interested in seeing movies set in this time period. Call me weird.

James Reasoner said...

Not weird at all. I'm also a fan of books and movies set during the Depression, possibly because I heard so much about that era from my parents.

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What a sweet dogs. I'm going to share this one.I would also like the dogs, they are so sweet. i just want to say, that's lovely. Thanks for commenting.

Wish You a Very Happy Mary Christmas.

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Oh, thanks for the review. It is such a lovely family movie. We watched it all together on a Christmas eve. I have seen the review for this movie in some custom writing services blogs. Recommend everyone to watch it!