A Dogwalker's Christmas Tale

Every year we are flooded with these ' Christmas ' films, usually made by television channels and this example is my first introduction to them. Maybe I chose the wrong one, and to a certain extent it does have a social cause at the heart of it. How to save a park from nasty people who want to get rid of it. Dogwalker's love it and lonely people love it and under the layers of cliche and endless dog caressing it has its heart in the right place. But sadly the constant smiling, and a cringe worthy romance makes it difficult to endure. The two leads do their best but swamped by Christmas tinsel and an awful musical soundtrack I felt sorry for them and hoped that fate would be kind and give them better roles. Everyone smiles and the utter and rather juvenile simplicity of how people really spend their lives is overwhelmingly trite, and the happiness factor is pumped up to the maximum. The men have to be muscular and third rate Prince Charming's and the women are suitably submissive. This is film as fast food product and like consuming too much sweet things it could induce addiction. Give me the bread and butter of those days outside of Christmas any day.

From the title itself you can tell that this will be no classic. It's a Christmas TV movie and expectations should be set at that level.

A rich girl meets a dog walker in the park and finds herself in a battle to save a local park from developers, which makes her re- evaluate her principles.

Like many of it's genre bedfellows it's very predictable and relies on the cast and the characters to make it a success. The cast do a good show with the limited material. Lexi Giovagnoli exudes a certain charm as the spoilt rich kid finally growing up and Jonathan Bennett does a half decent job as the activist. The back up cast are all adequate, with Timeca M. Seretti especially good in a cameo role as one of the dog walkers.

It's nicely filmed and there are a few hit and miss attempts at humour to go with the predictable romance. It's full to the brim with the usual Christmas messages i.e money isn't everything, family and friends mean the world etc. This is no bad thing but maybe they are forced home a bit too clumsily here.

You will pretty much know what's going to happen but as a very easy to watch Christmas movie, you could do a lot worse.

Who knows why these cheesy, made-for-TV movies appeal to me, but Netflix has me pegged and I am watching all of them.. 'A Dog Walker's Christmas Tale' claims to be set in Austin, Texas. As an Austin native, I am deeply offended. As an actual dog sitter, I could not believe that half of the actors were committed dog owners.

This movie is riding on Austin's coattails, likely because we have recently gained notoriety with the rest of the country. However, this movie does not actually take place in Austin, but instead a small, adjacent suburb that is the embarrassingly conservative cousin to our liberal, weird Austin. Perhaps 1% of the movie was actually filmed in Austin city limits, and that includes the brief shot of the downtown skyline during the opening credits. The rest was filmed primarily in Round Rock, which is night-and-day in aesthetic character. The backdrops of shops and landmarks do not at all authentically represent Austin. And yet, there are countless references to our capital city.

The plot revolves around dog lovers who congregate in a well-groomed dog park (again, the majority of Austin dog parks are torn up because dogs really PLAY in them). While I can handle the inevitable over-acting in these movies, only one or two of the actors really knew how to handle their four-legged counterparts. Most of these people were obviously uncomfortable, and reserved in their contact.

Overall, the plot, script, and execution were on par with all other films in this category. However I am definitely disappointed. I am an Austin dog walker, and was hoping to fall in love with the cheesy and romantic Christmas hope of falling in love with a fellow dog walker. Instead, I could only notice all of the drastic untruths.

I watched this a second time just to make sure I was judging it fairly. It's simply not very good.

A sample of the witty repartee Luce asks Dean a question Dead: Nunya Luce: What Dean: None of your business.

Middle school

Clearly a Hallmark wannabe, but it missed the mark.

Not exactly a bad movie, just disappointing.

The leads had a certain charm, Jonathan Bennett as Dean Stanton and Lexi Giovagnoli were a cute couple, they would have done better with a better script.

My Advice: Go ahead and watch it, it's entertaining, just don't expect too much.

If you are like me, you almost turned this off when you saw how much of an airhead the spoiled rich girl, Luce, is. For example, she max's out her parents' credit card buying a lavish gift for her boyfriend who then dumps her, apparently because of the gift. "No substance" he says.

Then throw in the premise of saving the community park from a developer. I hate these because it's always some stupid coincidental thing that comes through to save the day.

But I hate to give up easily and this one turns out to surprise me. Luce is a contradictory mess of a spoiled airhead who happens to have some smarts buried in there somewhere. Underneath she is sweet, but most of all she is playful and that comes out in a witty dialogue mostly between Luce and Dean. The story is mostly a vehicle to keep these two together exchanging banter. The dialogue is also quite silly at times, but there are more than a few smiles and laughs. The ending was maybe even more lame than I expected, but really pretty typical for this kind of movie.

Some of the acting is deliberate exaggeration like for instance Patrick Muldoon as the husband.

I don't think I have to mention there are lots of scenes with dogs.