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

Robo-Dog (2015)

There's no reason to sugarcoat this, Robo-Dog is truly awful. The acting starts at an incredibly low level in the opening scene and never makes an effort to stretch beyond that. Wallace Shawn is an actor you've seen in many films this poor, where he plays characters this transparent, but even he must have questioned whether it's worth turning up to the office. Speaking of the office, the scenes claiming to be shot in his high-tech research laboratory were done on such a cheap scale that even children's science programmes look more convincing.
Plot spoiler ahead.....the real dog, imaginatively called Dog, dies, through overheating in a hot attic, trapped whilst chasing a ball. The scene is done with so little explanation that whilst it's clear, after the event, that the dog is dead, the film chooses to dance around it for fear of touching on a serious topic.
The only redeeming feature in the entire debacle is the installation of vacuum in the dog's butt, but that merely emphasises the level the film is operating at.

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

D.A.R.Y.L. (1985)

In a world post-E.T. and Tron the movie studios were struggling to ensure that technology was part of the film formula and D.A.R.Y.L. tries to combine children and robots but it's all a bit dated in execution. The audience are led on a merry dance until it is revealed that Daryl is not all he seems but by then even a seven year old can work it out. The language is somewhat spicy for a PG in the 80s but the acting is decent enough, the bond between the kids is convincing and when Daryl takes control of his own destiny the film sweeps to a pleasing climax. It's all very silly and the technology, computer graphics and mainframe computers look incredibly dated, making Kubrick's A.I. look all the more outstanding.

Adult score: 3/5
Child score: 3/5
First thing the child said when the film finished: "It was okay"