By The fact that a movie like Santa Buddies can exist still boggles my mind. What was originally just Air Bud, a movie a a cool friggin’ dog that could shoot some cool friggin hoops for days, turned into Air Bud: Golden Retriever, Air Bud: World Pup, Air Bud: Seventh Inning Fetch, Air Bud: Spikes Back *takes breath*, Air Buddies, Snow Buddies, Space Buddies, Santa Paws, The Search for Santa Paws, Santa Paws 2: The Santa Pups, Spooooooky Buddies, Treasure Buddies, and Super Buddies.
…that’s a lot of doggies. Why are there so many doggie films? Why? Oh yeah that’s right. Because they’re friggin’ adorable. But what did I just watch?
[Nick’s Flixmas is a 25 day celebration of films Nick watches every Christmas! Nick will do some analysis, review, and just generally walk down memory lane. Hopefully you’ll enjoy the ride. Merry Flixmas!]
So, uh, Santa Buddies is a thing with dogs in it. There’s a plot and everything. Santa Paws (Santa Claus’s dog) gets so mad at Santa Pup (Santa Claus’s dog’s dog) that Santa Pup wants nothing to do with Christmas and the work that goes with it. He just wants to be a normal pup. He ends up finding Budderball (one of the Air Buddies) on Santa’s naughty list and decides the Air Buddies are the only ones who could teach him to be an average pup. Oh and all of this is while the North Pole is suffering from a power crisis in which a stalactite leaks a milky white, uh, Christmas Spirit dust. Weird sexual connotations aside, there are cute puppies in Santa Buddies.
The film takes a dark turn when Dogcatcher Stan Cruge played by Christopher Lloyd (really?) starts catching the buddies and then kind of sneers at them. I don’t really know what his plans were there. I guess if you consider the fact that none of the Air Buddies wore collars (unless you count B-Dawg’s bling), I guess he’s really only a bad guy because he was doing his job in a movie where his job is the worst thing in the world. It’s like in Lady and the Tramp. Since you only see it from the dog’s perspective, the human is the bad guy. I mean Cruge is cartoonishly evil, but that’s only because he’s being perceived as such. Wait, am I trying to find a deeper meaning in Santa Buddies? There honestly is no meaning. Because Santa Buddies is direct to video, it has the worst production quality in, like, ever.
There’s weird green screens, dogs mouths move oddly, and almost every child in this is terrible. But it has doggies. Cute doggies. And they run places. And then they pull a little sled. And then one has a Rudolph nose. And then they run more places. And they’re fluffy, they’re fluffy, and they’re flu-
Okay I’m done.
Tomorrow kicks off the Twelve Days of Flixmas. What film starts it off? Jingle All the Way! YESSSSS!