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 but Macaulay Culkin has been replaced by a Golden Retriever, which is an ex-police-dog suffering from PTSD and therefore unable to bark.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