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Movie:		3.0
Picture:		5.0
Sound:		5.0
Extras:		3.0
Score:		4.0

Director(s):	Robert Vince
Writer(s):	Robert Vince and Anna McRoberts
Starring:	Christopher Lloyd • Josh Flitter • Richard Kind • Tim Conway
Genre:	Children & Family • Comedy
Release Date:	November 24, 2009
Rated:

List Price:	Blu-ray - $24.49
Amazon:

Stretch too thin. Bend it until it breaks. Overstay your welcome. All are different ways of describing something which goes too far with too little. Some parents will say they like the entertainment the original Air Bud provided for their tots. They may even have been down with Bud’s football-based sequel. But can any of them say that they honestly don’t mind the annoying personas of the five golden retriever pups which comprise the “buddies”? If the Air Buddies premise, the talking puppies of Air Bud, wasn’t the straw that broke the camel’s back, then Space Buddies was. So what does that make Santa Buddies? Shameless. Unabashedly shameless marketing using Christmas and dog jokes that haven’t been funny since your kids read them aloud from that joke book you bought for them (rookie parent mistake).

Up in the North Pole, Santa’s workshop is aflutter with a flurry of holiday preparation. The elves work steadily making gifts while Santa Claus (George Wendt) and (remember that joke book?) Santa Paws oversee every step on the road to Christmas Eve. Production hits a kink however, when the giant icicle which gauges Christmas spirit melts noticeably. It seems kids (and puppies) just don’t understand the meaning of Christmas anymore and because of it Santa’s main power supply is failing. In all the commotion, Puppy Paws, Santa Paws’s obnoxious Labrador sire, causes havoc and decides to hitch a ride to the real world when he spots the Air Buddies in Santa Paws’s naughty and nice book. He jumps onto one of the Santa mail couriers and his adventure begins. As Puppy Paws wanders about his magical icicle collar spreads holiday cheer and helps him escape from dangerous situations. In the end he succeeds in teaching people what Christmas really means and gains new friends in the process.

There are small subplots here and there as the North Pole realizes Puppy Paws has gone AWOL and as families in the Air Buddies neighborhood are touched by the magical deeds of the holiday Labrador. There’s a villainous dogcatcher played by Christopher Lloyd whom the writers saw fit to give a most awfully conceived name Stan Cruge (S. Cruge = Scrooge), which is just so painfully obvious you almost wish they would have just named him something like Fred Jacobs and just made him Scrooge-like. In the end, Cruge learns the importance of compassion and makes Christmas a happy day for a special child, but only after a talking terrier (I think it’s a terrier at least) gives him the low-down on the reason for the season.

The kids who create the voices for the buddies and Puppy Paws are, without a single exception, awful. Good child actors are already hard to come by, expecting to find good child voice actors may be too much; especially when the characters being animated are dogs whose only ability to emote comes from the computer-animated mouths. Even the veteran actors like Richard Kind and Tim Conway who fill out animal characters suffer from the lack of expression, their voices may carry further courtesy of experience but that only helps so much.

Children’s Christmas films are a dime a dozen. The only conceivable reasons to buy Santa Buddies are if your children are giddy over puppies are set in the buddies film line. If so, then go ahead and embrace the newest installment, but know that this is a film with a definite age limit. Talking puppies won’t help the film past an eight-year-old crowd, and even then the lack of a good story might make it unbearable for anyone over six.

Otherwise you can get the exact same lessons of compassion and Christmas spirit from countless better Christmas films.

Blu-ray Bonus Features

The package includes the movies with all its extras on both a Blu-ray and DVD. Extras include musical tracks starring the buddies as they sing Christmas carols with words so the kids can follow along. Think this through though: the kid actors who play the dogs have horribly grating voices – so imagine them singing. Yes, it’s like the worst kids at your child’s grade school Christmas recital getting solo performances. Your kid could do better, and if you let them watch the extras they probably will.