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This is a horrible Christmas film, dog film, and romantic comedy. The tagline is hugely misleading; A woman tasked with finding homes for 12 abandoned puppies before Christmas finds love with her co-worker just in time for the holidays. Now I am going to spoil this terrible film for you. Michael Feifer has 37 writing credits and 71 directorial credits; most are TV movies. Erin, Charlotte Sullivan, is a hard-working canine therapist in New York City who is marrying her boyfriend at city hall the day before they leave for her new job in California. It turns out her boyfriend has been cheating on her for the last six months with her best friend Taylor, Jen Nikolaisen, so the relationship ends.
The dog GPS collar company that Erin took a job with four days before Christmas, is run by a brother and sister pair, Martin and Carly. Carly hired Erin without telling Martin. Here is where the 12 Pups come in. They were left at the office after a photoshoot. There may also be 14 puppies depending on how you count. Martin tasks Erin with finding homes for all the puppies. Taylor shows up the next morning and Erin punishes her by passing off the task of finding the puppies' homes! We see four puppies get forever homes and that is it. The entire tagline of the film is a lie because it is done off-screen. After all, Erin must go back to New York with Martin to get more venture capital funding.
In a hugely problematic workplace romance, Erin and Martin fall for each other, which may be Carly’s original plan. They take three days to fall in love, which if you are keeping track is just four days after Erin’s heart is broken and she is left at the altar of City Hall. The only chemistry these two have is to the camera. Feifer shoves it right up in everyone’s face whenever they are talking. The plot, dialog, and filming are all very grade school, but if you are pumping out multiple movies every year for over a decade, I guess you can’t put any time into the craft.
I love airplanes and continuity on airplanes never gets by me. Erin’s flight from New York to California is on an El-Al 747. While El-Al was flying 747s in 2019, they did not have a domestic flight within the US. On the return flight from California to New York, Erin and Martin are seated in first class. The seats are incredibly dated for any modern aircraft. There is a shot from the first-class window looking at the wing, and it is clearly from behind the wing, where economy would be. Once airborne, there is a CGI rendering of an Airbus A380, which is a twin-aisle aircraft on both decks despite the first-class seats being on a single-aisle plane. Back on the interior of the plane, the first-class seating arrangement goes bonkers. There are seats in the aisle blocking the curtain to the galley. The plane took off at night, as you would expect for a red-eye, but it also lands at night, meaning it took the long way around the world to get to New York? It also transforms from an A380 in flight to a Boeing 737 when it lands. There is no continuity and lots of stock footage and the worst aircraft interior were all used.
This movie is terrible, making fun of it was somewhat fun but almost anything else would be more fun. It is a bait and switch with the puppies and they deserved more screen time. The final reveal is a giant dose of nepotism and 100% predictable. I do not know why this movie exists or who financed it, but they had to have lost money. There is nothing in this film that will help advance any of the actors' and actresses' careers. Please skip this film.