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Monsters Inc.

The Proposal

It doesn’t need to be said, but it might for some. Santa Buddies is a movie for kids and for families. You can’t really tear this movie apart because it’s a part of the Buddies collection, a series of movies by Disney that go direct to home video. It’s not a big budget film; it’s four 3-8 year olds and it has to be graded on a curve. Thus compared to previous installments, Santa Buddies is an excellent movie. It’s the best one of the series to make it to Blu-Ray and DVD.

Evidently there’s not just a Santa Claus, there’s a Santa Paws too. Santa Paws has a pup, Puppy Paws. And when Puppy Paws leaves the North Pole to find the Buddies so he can learn how to be a normal puppy. Basically he’s tired of Christmas. When he leaves the North Pole though, Christmas magic starts to disappear. Puppy Paws trys to learn from the Buddies  but he quickly learns that he might not be able to be normal and he misses being a part of Christmas. He becomes stranded away from the North Pole and it’s up to the Buddies to get Puppy Paws back home and to save Christmas.

The cast in this movie is the highest-profile cast to take part in a Buddies movie. Hugh Jackman isn’t assisting the Buddies this time out or anything like that, but Santa Claus is played by George Wendt of Cheers fame. (I kept waiting for him to mention Vera Claus… it never happened.) And Christopher Lloyd plays the Christmas hating dog catcher. (Great Scott! Buddies!)

So the cast for the human roles is halfway decent in Santa Buddies, but the corniness still abounds. This is as it should be, but when the homeless puppy starts singing a song in the high-pitched voice… it gets to be a little too much for parents.   Still this is probably the best Buddies movie that Disney has put out, and you have to assume that they will keep pumping them out as long as little kids love them.