Even adorable puppies cannot save the travesty of SANTA BUDDIES: THE LEGEND OF SANTA PAWS

Nov 24th, 2009 | By Allan Given | Category: Home Entertainment

The next movie in the wildly successful live-action, talking dog series, AIR BUD and the subsequent AIR BUDDIES movies, SANTA BUDDIES: THE LEGEND OF SANTA PAWS, follows the adventures of Puppy Paws, the pup of Santa Paws who leaves the North Pole in order to learn how ordinary puppies live in the normal world. He soon comes across the quintet of pups, and stars of the other movies in the franchise, Budderball, Buddha, Mudbud, B-Dawg and Rosebud, but learns that Christmas spirit isn’t exactly overflowing out in the real world, and if people stop believing in Christmas, Santa and Santa Paws will lose their Christmas magic that helps them bring Christmas around the world each year. Puppy Paws sets out with the Buddies to help try and restore Christmas before its magic can melt away.

While children and animal lovers will certainly love the adorable canine stars of the film, unfortunately not much more can be found in SANTA BUDDIES: THE LEGEND OF SANTA PAWS that can really pass for entertainment. No real thought has been put into the film in regard to creativity and scenes become incredibly repetitive. This is even reflected in the editing, specifically in the scene where Puppy Paws talks to Budderball for the first time. The editor simply ping-pongs back and forth between static shots centered on each of the two dogs as the actors do their voice over lines. Coupling this with a simple piano tune that just keeps looping in the background scene after scene, the movie very quickly becomes tiresome. This unfortunately becomes the norm for the movie and without inspiration, the cuteness of the dogs cannot override the monotony of the uninspired direction of the film.

Even the actors who do appear on screen in the movie seem like they are merely just calling in their performances and could not really care if they were in fact making a film or not. George Wendt (“Cheers”) delivers a completely lackluster portrayal as Santa and at times just seems bored with the lines he is simply reading without giving any thought behind the performance. This attitude toward the film is likewise seen with the usually incredibly engaging and entertaining Christopher Lloyd (BACK TO THE FUTURE films) who is woefully underutilized in this film as the villain dog catcher Stan Cruge.

While this is a direct to video release, there is still no excuse for the low-grade CGI that the filmmakers chose to use, especially centering on a breakdancing number between B-Dawg and Puppy Paws that becomes almost comical in its lack of creativity. The CGI would have best been left out for it becomes too distracting and may in fact confuse children who watch as a real dog all of a sudden changes into a CGI dog baring little resemblance to its breathing counterpart.

All in all, SANTA BUDDIES: THE LEGEND OF SANTA PAWS is a movie that should be skipped and really doesn’t provide any level of entertainment for the family, but instead seems to be just a tired byproduct of a franchise that perhaps should have called it quits a few films ago. While the puppies used in the film are adorable, hearing the voice over actors utter lines like: “I don’t know dawg, you be trippin’ fo’shizzle” becomes just a little too painful to endure as it tries to pander for a laugh.

For the blu-ray release, Disney is including a DVD copy of the film as well which is a good deal and will allow families to watch the film on varying platforms. There is not much in the way of bonus features though and include only:

Sing Along Songs: “Santa Paws is Comin’ to Town,” “Deck the Halls” and “We Wish You a Merry Christmas”
Music video