The Dog Who Saved Easter (2014) Directed by Sean Olson

That Zeus is one busy dog! After saving Christmas back in 2009, the Christmas vacation in 2010, Halloween in 2011 and the holidays in 2012, he's back this year to save Easter!

Seriously, just be reading or hearing the title "The Dog Who Saved Easter" you pretty much know how this movie is going to be like. It's a fluffy, family friendly, talking animals movie, set during the holidays, that's doing absolutely nothing new and that's only good and fun to watch for very young children, who are not too demanding yet when it comes down to good storytelling and true creativity in movies.

I have never seen any of the previous Zeus the dog movies but I have a feeling that once you have seen one of them, you have seen them all already. It therefore also shouldn't matter too much whether or not you have seen any of the previous movies before. It does seem to reference to certain characters and events of some of the previous movies at times but it's not like you won't be able to follow or understand this movie if you haven't seen the previous ones that this one is occasionally referencing.

The story is far too simplistic and straightforward to ever work out as anything confusing or hard to follow of course. It also means that it's an extremely predictable movie, in which absolutely nothing comes as a surprise. It's actually disappointing how some of the plot lines aren't even developed properly enough, since they potentially could have turned the movie into a slightly more entertaining and solid one but it just seems that the film-makers were trying to keep things as simple as possible, or maybe the story just HAD to be written within a couple of days, so they never had the chance to tweak things.

But I'm of course not judging this movie too hard. It is what it is and it's nothing but some simple children's entertainment you show to your kids when you want to keep them occupied for 80 minutes. Everyone involved with this movie knew what they were involved with and most of the actors just seemed to be happy to be working and were having a good and fun time playing their characters. It's also the one thing that makes this movie good and enjoyable enough to watch.

It's not a great movie by any stretch of the imagination and it's disappointing how little effort it's making to ever be remotely creative and original with anything but then again, it also seems that they neither had the time or money to even turn this movie into a remotely decent one. Looks to me like this movie was shot within only a couple of weeks, with a budget well below $100,000. Just to show you how cheap and simple this movie is; the animal's mouths don't even ever move when they are 'talking'.

But you know, as far as fluffy, talking animal movies go, this isn't the worst or most annoying one you can watch. The humor, characters and story are very childish and simplistic all but luckily never in an annoying or distracting way. And besides, there are far too little Easter movies, for the whole family to enjoy, out there any way, so go Zeus!

5/10

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