Generally speaking, Christmas movies with dogs are terrible. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a good dog-centric Christmas movie. At least not one on Hallmark or Lifetime. But I’m willing to give The Dog Days Of Christmas a chance.

After three years away, Annie (Georgia Flood) is an aid worker who has finally come home for the holidays. Unwilling to simply relax, she volunteers to foster three dogs. With the help of her high school debate team nemesis, Dylan (Ezekiel Simat), who also happens to be the town veterinarian, Annie works her non-profit magic to save the local animal shelter.

While it sounds like this would be a promising plot for a movie, there is so little that actually happens. Instead of showing us things, the movie likes to tell us things. There are a few small scenes where people are interacting with the dogs but a lot of the scenes are montages of Annie interviewing people to adopt the dogs or Annie handing out flyers at a dog park. (Here’s a hint, Annie. The people at dog parks already have dogs. That isn’t an ideal place to look for people to adopt dogs.) It would have been nice to have a little more interaction with the dogs since the movie is named after them.

As for the people, none of the people in this movie have any chemistry together. You would think they were all cast yesterday and just met the day of filming. I think they needed a few happy hours or something to get to know each other before pretending that they’ve all known each other for years. Because it definitely does not come through in the movie.

The Dog Days Of Summer isn’t the worst dog-related Christmas movie I have seen. Even taking out the dogs, it’s not a good movie. I would say to stay away from this one. There’s much better movies out there. And if you really want a dog movie, don’t watch a Christmas one. You are bound to be disappointed.