The Town Christmas Forgot (2010)

This is a made for television Christmas feel-good film, that's all you need to know because you can draw your own conclusions from that and will not be far wide of the mark.

The implausibilities and ridiculous nature of the plot do not bare discussing, there are cliches oozing from every orifice. The acting is perfunctory from the main players and then is a sliding scale from there, to the point that you could believe that a film crew rocked into a destitute town to begin production and some locals drifted onto the set when nobody was looking.

You could blame the failure of this film on the absence of cats and dogs and magic but this would have required high-grade Magic Circle influence to conjure anything special out of such a lame premise.

There are no redeeming aspects to this film.

Adult score: 0/5
Child score: 4/5
First thing the child said when the film finished: Nothing to say and no explanation to justify the high score

The New Adventures of Pippi Longstocking (1988)

We went into this knowing nothing of the books (apart from the suggestion that the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo lead character had some traits for survival similar to Pippi) or background and the opinions on the final product could not be more polarised.

It's no use examining the plot or plausibility of the film, that's not what it's about. The film is an exploration of a child's imagination and how belief, passion and a lust to squeeze every last ounce of pleasure from life can reap positive rewards. Pippi's imagination knows no boundaries and even in the face of dire circumstances she remains unbowed and disappears down another fantastical tangent. It would be all too easy to suggest it's a tactic for suppressing traumatic events, borne of a dead mother, a fantasist absent father and a string of surrogate parents when it's clearly just a ginger-haired loner growing up in a derelict mansion, plagued by predatory adults and sharing a room with a monkey and a donkey.

The adult found this film thoroughly entertaining purely for its refusal to follow the standard structure of  children's films and to just throw caution to the wind - anything is possible goddamit and we're going to film it that way. The child just thought it was all a bit ridiculous, didn't buy into it and provided the lowest score to date.

Adult score: 4/5
Child score: 1/5
First thing the child said when the film finished: Rubbish

Prancer Returns (2001)

As with a lot of these films (also see the Snow Pups/Space Pups series or Air Bud), the formula from the original film is taken, still warm, it's been barely regurgitated, but with different actors, perhaps a different location or timeframe. There's little improvement from Prancer, more a loss as Sam Elliott is no longer involved, and the acting talent on display try to sound and look vaguely convincing but they will not be needing to build a cabinet for their awards anytime soon and the scriptwriter has given them little to go on.

Son of reindeer, disaffected child, grumpy neighbour (Jack Palance providing the historical acting aura and gruffness in the absence of Elliott), snow, Christmas, happy ending.

It's harmless but just not any good.

Adult score: 1/5
Child score: 4/5
First thing the child said when the film finished: Just the same as the first

Prancer (1989)

This is the innocent sort of Christmas film which is hard to hate. The story is unremarkable and full of the usual Christmas film tropes but it seems acceptable, perhaps because Sam Elliott is archetypal gruffness or perhaps just because you signed up for a magical Christmas film so sit back and go with it.

Adult score: 3/5
Child score: 4/5
First thing the child said when the film finished: People should watch it

Shelby (2014)

This is not a terrible film it's just not really any good. It employs two of the key components, a boy and a dog, with the addition of Christmas, but it all really amounts to nothing. The saccharine American family, with underachieving, emotionally unstable children try to reconcile the reality or fantasy of Santa and the obstacle to happiness is the local dog catcher. It's all standard fare, with Tom Arnold and Chevy Chase well aware that their careers have declined to this paycheck collecting low, but happy to deliver the odd line designed to show the parents the writers and producers do have a sense of humour and are just churning this stuff out to please the execs.

Adult score: 2/5
Child score: 3/5
First thing the child said when the film finished: We've watched that before.

Santa Paws 2: The Santa Pups (2012)

It's academic to talk about the plot for this film. There are some pups who do not listen to their mother, cause Christmas mayhem and low grade rioting, and have to be rescued by Santa's Elf, in the course of saving Christmas goodwill. The twist from the first of the Santa Paws films is that there are numerous song and dance routines thrown in for entertainment value and to lengthen the running time of a painfully slow film.

The acting is perfunctory at best and the local telephone exchange must have been melting under the intensity of so many parts being phoned in by the actors. Not even the usually reliable formula of kids and cats and dogs and Christmas magic can save this one.

Adult score: 0/5
Child score: 4/5
First thing the child said when the film finished: Can I have some apple juice please?

A Dog for Christmas (2015)

Poor Dean Cain, where did it all go wrong after Lois and Clark's heroic adventures? In this spectacularly risible film he plays the part of the mastermind in a pair of bungling burglars and if you squint hard enough when watching you can see a part of him dying inside everytime he's expected to deliver a poor line or act the fool.

This film is nothing more than Home Alone (Bone Alone anyone?) but Macaulay Culkin has been replaced by a Golden Retriever, which is an ex-police-dog suffering from PTSD and therefore unable to bark. We're not given the backstory to explain the traumatic complexities but it must have been fairly significant given the distant look in the dog's eyes.

A further perplexing element of this film is just how the central family are able to afford such a large house. The wife if apparently a seamstress and the husband seems to do nothing but prance about the house and walk the dog. Beyond this the extent of the Christmas decorations around the house is utterly ludicrous. It would have taken days, cost exorbitant amounts of money and quite frankly looks garishly showy but we are expected to accept this without question. And whilst we're on the subject of absurdity, who was that large ginger-haired man hanging around the daughter? Of course we're not expecting an exact genetic match between the actors but this guy, who was supposed to be the older son (although there was a strange mysterious line in the script suggesting his origins were unknown), just plain looked as though he'd got lost on his shift from Dominos and had been asked to hang around and fill in where he could.

This is all undeniably rubbish and could easily have made its way into the top three.

Adult score: 0/5
Child score: 4/5
First thing the child said when the film finished: It's just like Home Alone

Beverly Hills Christmas (2015)

The prospects for this film were poor from the start, with the suggestion that we have not had enough of being asked to empathise with a spoilt rich kid undergoing a redemption. Things quickly plummeted when, early on, little effort was made to make the only action sequence of the film in anyway dramatic. In the blink of an eye a character is dead, move on, oh and by the way, the fact that they're talking to someone in a white suit means the story is in someway connected to heaven. The inexplicable plot, too ridiculous for even a seven year old to make sense of, pales into insignificance when you realise that the man in the white suit is none other than Dean Cain. Not only does Dean need to find himself a new agent but he also needs to spend some more time with a personal trainer.

The film is spectacularly awful with one redeeming scene illustrating that those producing this have a sense of humour. It turns out that the school principal is actually the brother of Dirty Harry. Not only is there a direct reference in the script but there are some Harryesque one-liners and as gravelly a voice as the actor could muster.

Adult score: 1/5
Child score: 3/5
First thing the child said when the film finished: Hmmmm