12 Dogs of Christmas: The Great Puppy Rescue is a sequel to the 2005 Depression era film 12 Dogs of Christmas. The film is set six years after the original film, it still has a 1930s setting.
Dog lover Emma (Danielle Chuchran) returns to her home town for a funeral. Her friend is seriously injured in a car accident and becomes paralysed. Finneas James (Sean Patrick Flanery) the rich arch villain wants to close down the home for dogs, Emma races to put up a Christmas extravaganza to raise funds but Finneas conspires to put them off course, by pressurising the theatre to withdraw his support and even threatening the dog's lives with a fire.
The film is squarely aimed at children who will find the puppies cute and enter the spirit of the Christmas show which has an actor portraying Bing Crosby entertaining to raise funds.
The villain is two dimensional and hiss able, it tries to capture the spirit of the High School Musical films but does not really succeed. I was not always convince with it as a period piece as there were too many modern mannerisms for my liking. It was also too low budget, you can tell with the green/blue screen and also slightly overlong. However the kids would enjoy this film during the Christmas holidays.