Deck The Halls With Anything But A Bulldog For Christmas

Bulldogs, like any dog in existence, are adorable. Just look at this little guy on a skateboard:

Or this bulldog who is just so happy about his costume!

See what I mean? These are precious puppers! So you'd think a movie called A Bulldog For Christmas would be a guaranteed success, the biggest can't miss proposition for a movie in history. But A Bulldog For Christmas misses the mark simply by ignoring the bulldog of its title for long stretches of its runtime! Yes, the movie A Bulldog For Christmas shunts its titular canine off to the sidelines for the majority of its plot even though the only reason any human being would watch this movie would be to watch the bulldog shenanigans. It's like if someone made a Star Trek movie and filled the runtime with a boring cooking video instead!

The premise of A Bulldog For Christmas is the same kind of plot we've seen tons of times before in that magical subgenre that revolves around a heavily flawed human being turning into a household pet to learn a lesson about better appreciating their family and life itself (The Shaggy Dog and Nine Lives are famous examples of this subgenre). Here, the person getting turned into a bulldog is college student Sally Kroger (Marylee Osborne) and you can tell she's a troubled soul because she returns home from college covered in piercing and attire that some old out of touch studio executive from 2005 thinks all the cool Goth kids are wearing these days.

Sally wants nothing to do with her families tradition of going to their deceased grandfather's winter home and celebrating Christmas and thus, she is visited by some kind of magical entity known as Chips (Henrique Couto, who also directs this project) who proceeds to turn her into a bulldog so she can learn a valuable lesson about appreciating her family and the spirit of the holidays. Wicked Uncle Randall (Vincent Holiday) shows up soon after Sally has turned into a dog proclaiming he wants to sell the grandfather's house for large sums of money because the prospect of suddenly turning into a dog wasn't enough conflict for this movie.

The absolute strangest part of A Bulldog For Christmas is how little of it actually concerns the titular bulldog. There are two brief segments of the movie that run about a minute each that are solely devoted to footage of the titular bulldog running around in a backyard that are easily the highlight of the whole feature, it's just so much fun to watch this doggo run around and being happy. Aside from those momentary distractions though, A Bulldog For Christmas shuns its lead canine to the sidelines, typically just going back to it so that Marylee Osborne can deliver wry voice-over quips, including one that leads into a confusingly executed fart joke.

When we're not watching medium shots of a bulldog accompanied by banal voiceover work, A Bulldog For Christmas concerns itself with treating the struggles of its various family members as serious as possible. Way too much screentime is handed over to characters delivering somber monologues reflecting their inner emotions while neither the performances nor the writing of these extended dialogue pieces are anywhere near good enough to warrant so much screentime being devoted to them. There's one scene in particular where Peggy Kroger (Erin R. Ryan) wistfully monologues about her woes for what seems like an eternity while her boyfriend tries to propose to her that becomes more and more like nails on a chalkboard as it goes on.

The character-based drama takes up so much of the story of A Bulldog For Christmas that long stretches of screentime without a single appearance by a bulldog. And when that bulldog does show up, it's usually so more tedious voiceover one-liners can rear their head or, in one instance, it's so that the mom of the Kroger family can claim that all bulldogs are "ugly". Bulldogs aren't ugly! What is ugly is the weird green-screen that shows up throughout the film, though at least such distracting backgrounds are bound to capture your attention, unlike the monotonous dialogue.  Ugh, A Bulldog For Christmas is so boring and lacking in bulldog shenanigans, you're better off just watching gifs of bulldogs like the one below:

Mama Just Killed A Man....Put A Gun Against His Head...Pulled My Trigger Now He's Dead....

Now that It looks to be well on its way to becoming a box office phenomenon like we've never seen for the horror genre before (it already made $51 million yesterday and will probably make as much as $105 million by the time the weekend is done), it looks like director Andy Muschietti is well on his way to becoming a big modern day horror movie filmmaker with only his second feature film. What was his first movie prior to It? Why it was none other than the 2013 feature Mama, a horror movie executive produced by Guillermo Del Toro (who is additionally credited as "presenting" the movie) that debuted back in January 2013.

Human Beings Helping Other Human Beings Is The Crux Of The Beautiful Short Term 12

I tend to think of myself as a Timely Timothy, but man, I can also be such a procrastinator if I don't keep my innately lazy tendencies in check. Delaying stuff I need to get done has come back to bite me plenty of times, but man, I feel like a real loser for managing to put off watching the 2013 indie drama Short Term 12 for so long. Once I missed this one's theatrical release, it somehow slipped off my radar over the past few years despite constantly hearing quite positive things about it. Well, I managed to rent it from the library a while back and finally finally finally watched it and oh my God, I am filled with an incredible amount of regret in regards to not watching this movie much sooner than I did.

The Purge: Election Year Is A Majorly Forgettable Piece Of Action/Horror Satire

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Film On The Television (9/24/2015): You're Next on Epix Hits

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Hansel And Gretel: Witch Hunters Review (Classic Write-Up)

The Witch Is Back

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Lana Del Rey Deserved Better Than The 2013 Great Gatsby (When Good Songs Happen To Bad Movies)

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Lots can be said about Baz Luhrmann's 2013 adaptation of The Great Gatsby, but one can never say that the feature had a shortage of bombastic elements. Whether such elements were actually good or not is another debate (I'd say mostly not), but it is one of the more audacious movies made in recent years, with 3D being utilized to help fully sell the absorbing atmosphere of the era while rap music populates 1920's environments.

Frozen 2 Confirms That Disney Won't Let It Go

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Unfinished Business Review

How to Not Succeed In Business Without Really Trying

Well Vince Vaughn, here you are again. After starring in two big duds in 2013 (namely, The Delivery Man, one of the worst films of that year), you've returned to movie theaters...for some reason. His newest feature, Unfinished Business, has no problem continuing his streak for creating low-quality comedic films, despite a cast full of well known and talented names that could have brought the laughs in another, more competently produced film. 

Focus Review

The Con, The Chef, The Wife And His Lover

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How DreamWorks Animation Lost Its Way

Last night, I gave one of 2014's most delightful films, Big Hero 6, a rewatch, and found it be such a glorious experience, especially since I watched it with two viewers who hadn't seen the film in theaters. That rewatch got me thinking about the American animation landscape, and my mind eventually turn it's attention to one particular studio that's been facing some "troubles", to put it lightly, lately: DreamWorks Animation.

Her Review

What? Is She Funny Or Something?

Some people spent last night going to parties, or going on dates, but me? I was the coolest dude on the planet, because I spent the evening alone watching the best movie of 2013: Her. Rewatching the film for the first time since it's theatrical release only reaffirmed my praise for this modern masterpiece, which is one of the best artistic depictions of the deeper intricacies of love and human connection ever brought to life.

Love Is Strange Review

Come And Get Your Love

What a true title. Love is, indeed, strange. It's a concept that's inspired all forms of media ranging from poems to paintings to web shorts. In the realm of cinema, the best movie of 2013, Her, showcased love's strangeness in a beautiful manner, and now another very high quality feature has come around to prove such a point. Love Is Strange centers around the romance between Ben (John Lithgow) and George (Alfred Molina), two men who have been together for multiple decades.

NSFW Unfinished Business Trailer Shows Drugs, Tears Gas And Dave Franco Nudity (WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT AHEAD)

Vince Vaughn's double dose of box office dudes in 2013 is leading him to restructure a comeback in 2015. The most buzzed about role for him next year is his major part in the second season of True Detective, but he's also got a new R-rated comedy being released as well. The feature just dropped a an extremely R-rated, nudity and swear filled, NSFW trailer, which you can watch below.

Gone Girl Review

My procedure for movies based on books is to not give the literature that inspired the feature a read prior to seeing the film. It's not that I'm against books in general, it's just that I want to treat the film as a separate entity as much as possible. Gone Girl adds an interesting facet to this tactic though by having Gillian Flynn, the woman who wrote the book that this movie is based on, write the films screenplay. If her books are anything like this films writing in terms of quality, I'll be sure to check out any and all of her work ASAP.

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A Frozen Theme Park Ride Is Coming To Walt Disney World

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One Year Later, What Does The Fox Say Remains A Bizzare Musical Gem

Musical phenomenons are not unusual, with things like Gangnam Style, Call Me Maybe and Let It Go overtaking the human race in ways both exciting and terrifying. A week after I saw Frozen, I mentioned the phrase "let it go" in a reference to the film, and I received blank stares. A single month later, saying one of those three words in any context would trigger endless singing. Last September, one song continued the trend of a popular tune taking over, but this one was....well, let's say different.

Bojack Horseman Review: Will Arnett Is A Formerly Famous (And Spardoically Humorous) Horse

A Horse Is A Horse, Yes Of Course

Television is a constantly evolving medium, with color bringing new possibilities to storytelling and marketing in the 50's. The more recent, yet somehow slightly quaint, innovation of a Tivo gave one more ease in recording programs. Netflix has been another evolution for television, and a seismic one in terms of impact. Prior to 2013, the idea of Netflix entering original programming through the streaming service that had helped give birth to their 2011 "Qwikster" debacle seemed like a joke.