The confusing logic of yesterday's filmThe Ultimate Christmas Present does not hold a candle to the complete nonsensical dross of Santa Stole Our Dog, a truly dreadful 2017 effort from director Bryan Michael Stoller. It’s the sort of film that is so poorly executed, it makes you wonder what the heck the filmmakers were thinking, but is sufficiently bizarre and random enough to hold my interest for a while, at least. Still, this is the first film in this mission that I come close to switching off.
The long and short of it is that the Whitehaven family’s dog Rusty sneaks into Santa (Edward Asner)’s bag of toys and is accidentally whisked off to the North Pole. To get him back, the family, excluding the mum (Candice Schroeder), who inexplicably acts like a total bitch about the whole thing, go on an excruciating quest through snowy Canada, where they have zany brushes with the cops, a creepy kleptomaniac and an elf.
I can’t fault the film for having barrel-loads of madcap ideas, but it all looks scuzzy and awful, with the worst CGI and set design I’ve ever seen in an alleged motion picture. The North Pole is presented as a bizarre, sleazy-looking place populated by elves, some of whom are played by kids with weird digitally-altered high voices, others by skanky looking adults. One looks like a sleazy Elvis-impersonator, another like a stripper (Yvette Rachelle) who not so subtly flirts with Asner’s borderline-senile Santa who is clearly pushing 90. There’s also a completely emotionless CGI elf for some reason, who looks even worse than anything in The Grump… When the elves all have a wild ‘party,’ it’s all got the grimy vibe of an unsavoury Sons of Anarchy-style lock-in. I’d feel weird letting my child watch this. Everything in the film feels a bit off and sordid, like a kids film imagined by a coked-up creep.
Eric Roberts shows up, as Eric Roberts tends to do in weird direct-to-video films, as the ruthless boss of the world’s naffest toy company that the dad (Yves Bright) tries to flog the toy he invented to. As standard in these films, his ‘Dodo’ toy is unbelievably rubbish, but we’re asked to accept that it’s awesome. There’s also a whole thing with Dad having seen Santa when he was a boy and kept the half-munched cookie he left behind. This leads to a baffling DNA subplot where Santa is revealed as a perfect, 1,000-year-old example of Christian humanity. Yes, really.
This is packed with oddness, like the part where the dad, having actually met Santa and a living, breathing elf, suddenly decides he doesn’t believe in Santa after all. Or the bit where Santa visits him through (rubbish) virtual reality. Or when the kleptomaniac casually shares tales of his horrific facial skin grafts (with skin taken from his butt) with a little girl. Or when the car crashes and everyone screams in bloodcurdling terror. This is a kids film, remember.
If it’s got anything going for it, it’s that you honestly have no idea what the heck’s going to happen next. Towards the climax, the film decides to shoehorn in a bizarre last-minute message about global warming and earthquakes, somehow tying this to the decline of Christmas. They also squeeze in a bunch of hopeless musical montages, including a song from Dolly Parton. I see the film was marketed based on the inclusion of the Parton tune, which is a major red herring. Fans of Dolly beware – you want nothing to do with this wretched, misjudged mess. I feel like I need a shower after watching this.
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