Director: Joseph J. Lawson
Writers: Nancy Leopardi, from a story by Naomi L. Selfman
Starring: David DeLuise, Kim Little, Davis Cleveland, and Gerald Webb
We must be in much better moods than usual this holiday
season; although some of the movies we’ve seen have really sucked, there
weren’t many (if any at all) that we truly hated. I mean, our relationship with
these cheesy holiday flicks are pretty fickle: all it takes is one bad
character, one forced plot twist, one obligatory argument started for a stupid
reason, to take an otherwise enjoyable movie into “frustrating” territory.
I will freely admit that I picked this movie for one reason,
and one reason only: I knew it would bomb. (Well, that, and to get a little
break from the romance movies that permeate the atmosphere this time of year.)
I mean, an homage (read: rip-off) of Home Alone, only with Macauley Culkin’s
character replaced by a dog? There’s just no way possible that can’t be
atrocious. Add to it the dad from “Wizards of Waverly Place” (a show my wife
and I actually enjoyed, mostly without irony, during its run years ago), as
well as the fact that this is a production of The Asylum, and that leaves you
a recipe for catastrophic failure.
It is, but most of it is enjoyably so: it’s not until the
actual “defending the house” plotline starts that it veers off into
“irredeemably bad” territory, with Bones the dog using everything at his
disposal to rid his family’s large house of three bumbling would-be burglars.
This is a combination of awkwardly bad special effects, a serious lack of
comedic timing, and a rather startling level of violence (I wasn’t expecting a
character to land face first onto a grill).
David DeLuise, the aforementioned dad from Waverly Place,
plays a character known only as “Dad”, which really goes to show you the level
of detail the writers paid to the story. He and his perfect family—which
consists of the ideal combination of wife, husband, son, and daughter—are going
on a trip to their grandparents’ house for the holidays. However, they are only
able to take one of their two dogs with them on the trip, a notion that’s
actually ass backwards (I feel like most families would either take both or
none); so poor old Bone gets stuck going to the kennel.
In a scene that goes on for way too long, Dad has some
reservations about the place, but the weird owner reassures him that he’s been
doing this for a long time and will take good care of the dog while they are
away. Reluctantly, Dad agrees—but before you know it, Bone breaks free and
returns home after catching wind that some robbers might be targeting their
house. Christ, whatever. The usual hijinx ensue, including lots of cartoon
violence and overly inept criminals that frequently cross the line into unfunny
territory.
It’s not without its plusses, though: Jonathan Nation as Anthony, the kennel owner, is genuinely hilarious in the role; so too is--and I’m not making this up--Kevin Sorbo, who clearly was in this just for the check (his character just up and leaves midway through for no reason), but still delivers a performance that’s way better than the material deserves. Once he leaves, the movie’s all pretty much downhill from there.
The end results are about what you’d expect, but despite a decent beginning, the knocks against it quickly start to accumulate: the effects are some of the worst I’ve ever seen (see: the scene where the family SUV backs into something, complete with computer-generated broken glass…despite the car not even touching what it was supposed to crash into), the writing is beyond inept, and the “twist” ending is so illogical that you’ll probably be screaming at the television set. I also hated the voice of the family’s other dog, Cleveland (cute name, though), who frantically tries getting home in time to give Bone a hand. He’s got a couple funny lines, but ultimately he’s an unnecessary side character that distracts from the overall story.
And the scenes of Bone defending the house are so poorly done that they defy logic. I'm even setting aside the idea that he's a dog that somehow manages to not only remember where a bunch of household items are, but also manages to grab them using just his paws (and without making a single bit of mess). I mean, I guess you kind of have to give it that pass, or else you wouldn't have much of a movie. My problem with all of it is that, like most of the jokes, there's no setup to the "punchline"...it just happens.
In Home Alone, you had a kid who slowly realized what was happening, and then sprung into action to defend his home. It isn't believable in the slightest, but of course it isn't really meant to be. Yet, it almost feels believable because of the way Kevin uses random everyday items to destroy the bumbling crooks; the traps feel like they were set up in a way a child of his age would think. In Alone for Christmas, there's no set-up to the defending of the home whatsoever: Bone finally makes it home shortly before the thieves make it there, and then just starts setting up random traps, which of course, the thieves all manage to hit, often with little to no coersion.
But beyond this instantaneous, ungratifying setup is yet another layer to why it doesn't work: the traps aren't really set up in a way befitting a dog. It would have been much..."cooler" (for lack of a better term) if the traps felt like they were actually conceived from the mind of a dog; instead, many of them are ripped off right from Home Alone. It's terrible, and the movie loses all of its remaining grip once these scenes start.
The leader of the thieves is actually pretty decent, and deserves to be in a better movie; the others, not so much. They're just your standard moronic young burglars who overact at everything and get their laughs out of saying stupid things and acting as dumb as possible. Yeah yeah, it's a low-budget movie marketed toward kids, so it's not all that surprising, but that fact doesn't make me hate it any less.
If you were planning on streaming this (and, let's be frank here: you weren't), then I'll make it easy for you: don't. There's nothing here for you. Even if you have kids, I'm sure you can find something that will hold their attention for longer, and that won't give you an intense headache from the stupidity of it all.
OVERALL: 3.5/10
STRAY OBSERVATIONS
- In an odd marketing decision, the dog on the front cover isn't even the one who defends the home from invaders.
- This is the reason Asylum movies have such a bad rep.
- The "mouth moving" effects on the dogs are actually pretty good for a trash movie.
TRAILER
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