Hello everyone! 🙂
Welcome to ‘Bradley’s Basement’ and I’m Tim Bradley!
Last year, my parents and I saw the ‘Santa Paws’ trilogy on DVD for Christmas. This year, my parents and I saw ‘The Dog Who Saved Christmas Collection’ on DVD for Christmas. My cuddly toy dog Cuddles saw these movies too!
Cuddles: YAY!!! Wuff, wuff!!!
I suppose it’s becoming a tradition now to see something ‘doggie’-related when it comes to movies and such before I review them on my blog. I don’t mind that since it was fun to watch ‘The Dog Who Saved Christmas Collection’ for Christmas. They’re three films contained in a 3-disc DVD set. Nice!
But first things first, let’s go into a little backstory… (rolls eyes) …because ‘The Dog Who Saved Christmas’ sort-of has its own film series. It was at first a TV movie released in 2009 shown on US television. The film starred Dean Cain, Gary Valentine and Mario López as the voice of Zeus the dog.
Apparently, ‘The Dog Who Saved Christmas’ was so popular with audiences that it ‘warranted’ a number of sequels. This included ‘The Dog Who Saved Christmas Vacation’, ‘The Dog Who Saved Halloween’, ‘The Dog Who Saved the Christmas Holidays’, ‘The Dog Who Saved Easter’ and ‘The Dog Who Saved the Summer’. Gosh, saying these ‘Dog Who Saved…’ movie titles really hurts my head! 😀
I’ve not seen all of ‘The Dog Who Saved…’ movies as ‘The Dog Who Saved Christmas Collection’ only contains the three ‘Christmas’ movies of the series. I’m not in a hurry to get the ‘Halloween’, ‘Easter’ and ‘Summer’ movies yet. I’ll get onto to those when doing full-on detailed reviews on the three ‘Christmas’ films. With that said, all six of these films are bound to be just as similar anyway! 😀
I say that because ‘The Dog Who Saved…’ films seem to have a certain formula that gets repeated over and over again. That formula is… they happen to be ‘Home Alone’ rip-offs with a dog! I’m not even kidding! Every ‘The Dog Who Saved…’ film happens to have elements of ‘Home Alone’ in them.
That’s because the films’ villains, who happen to be two criminals – Dean Cain as Ted and Joey Diaz as Stewey – appear in every film for Zeus the dog to thwart against. I wouldn’t mind this so much, except that it’s a coincidence those two crooks keep meeting up with Zeus the dog in these films. 😀
But I’m jumping ahead here. Let’s talk about ‘The Dog Who Saved Christmas’ films each in turn. The first ‘Dog Who Saved Christmas’ film, in my opinion, is the best one! It’s not a masterpiece, but before all the creditability gets taken away in the sequels, I found the first film of the lot very decent.
The film has Zeus the dog, voiced by Mario López, adopted into the Bannister family, including Gary Valentine as George and Elisa Donovan as Belinda with their kids Ben and Kara. Zeus has to prove he’s worthy to be a member of the Bannister family by guarding the family house from intruders. 😀
What’s interesting about these dog films is that Zeus the dog speaks… telepathically, I think, with other animals. He doesn’t open his mouth when he talks like with animatronics or CGI. I’m thankful for this. We don’t have to have stilted, scary CGI mouths with dogs like in ‘Santa Paws’ and ‘Pudsey’. It’s more like the dog voicework in ‘A Dog’s Purpose’ and ‘A Dog’s Journey’.
An annoying inconsistency for me with these ‘Dog Who Saved…’ films is the casting of the Bannister children. In each film I’ve seen, they keep changing the child actors playing Ben and Kara. I know these kids have to go to school, but I know when a kid doesn’t look the same as in the previous film.
The other two ‘Dog Who Saved Christmas’ films are decent enough. In ‘The Dog Who Saved Christmas Vacation’, Zeus and the Bannister family spend a Christmas holiday in the Rocky Mountain resort with Casper Van Dien as Uncle Randy, his young son and his foxy poodle Bella (voiced by Paris Hilton), whom Zeus falls in love with. The two crooks Ted and Stewie from the previous film return!!!
And in the third ‘Christmas’ movie called ‘The Dog Who Saved the Christmas Holidays’, the Bannister family and Zeus, now voiced by Joey Lawrence, spend the Christmas holidays in Southern California with Shelley Long as Aunt Barbara. Wait! Shelly Long from ‘Cheers’?! I wondered what became of her! 😀 And there’s a puppy named Eve (voiced by Peyton List) competing with Zeus’ place in his family.
‘The Dog Who Saved Christmas Collection’ has been an enjoyable set of doggie Christmas films to watch in 2019. They’re not great and they’re clearly ripping off the ‘Home Alone’ movies, but they’ve been enjoyable. I look forward to reviewing each film in turn in full detail along with their other three movies of the series including ‘Halloween’, ‘Easter’ and ‘Summer’. I’m certain they’ll be just as similar.
By the way, I just realised Dean Cain was Superman in the ‘Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman’ TV series. Hmm! Good to know that!
Thanks for reading!
Bye for now!
Tim. 🙂
Bradley's Basement 