The Search for Santa Paws

The Search for Santa Paws

Voice Cast: Zacary Gordan, Richard Riehle, Richard Kind, Josh Flitter
Genre: Kids, Family, Animation, Christmas
Rated: G

From the creators of the loveable Buddies, Disney's The Search for Santa Paws, is an original, fun-filled and heart-warming film that takes us back to the beginning of the friendship between Santa Claus and Santa Paws.

In this prequel to the hit holiday classic Santa Buddies, Santa Paws and his new friends embark on an adventure through New York City to find Santa Claus and restore the spirit of Christmas.

Before he was helping the Buddies and Puppy Paws in their Christmas adventure, Santa Paws was a very special stuffed toy delivered to Santa for his 1600th birthday, and brought to life by the magical, Great Christmas Icicle.

Paws (voiced by Zacary Gordan), is a lovable and naïve Great Pyrenees pup, and has great fun helping Santa Claus (Richard Riehle) in his workshop.

When Santa Claus takes a trip to New York City, an accident leaves him without his memory, and families everywhere may miss out on Christmas!

It is up to Santa Paws to find Santa Claus and restore the Christmas spirit, but New York City is a lot bigger than the North Pole, and to succeed he must find help from fellow canine and human friends.

Touching many lives along the way, including two orphans who wish only to have a family, new friends Eddy (voiced by Richard Kind) - a Jack Russell Terrier and fellow pup from the North Pole - and T-Money (voiced by Josh Flitter), a street smart bulldog pup, help Santa Paws as he embarks on a big city adventure. Will the mismatched group of loveable pups be able to beat this race against time to bring Santa Claus back to the North Pole, and save Christmas for everyone?!

With all-new characters, featuring adorable talking dog friends, this is the perfect Christmas gift the whole family can enjoy.

Special Features:
Only on DVD and Blu-ray can you see bonus features including: deleted scenes and doggy bloopers that will have you howling with laughter; music videos; a behind-the-scenes featurette and games and activities!

The Search for Santa Paws
RRP: $39.95

Interview with Robert Vince

Robert Vince is the director of the fun-filled and heart-warming family movie, The Search for Santa Paws.

Question: The Santa Buddies have been everywhere, including space; what do the Santa Paws have to do this time to save Christmas?

Robert Vince: The Search for Santa Paws is a prequel to Santa Buddies and there are no Buddies in this movie, at all. The Search for Santa Paws is a movie that really tells how Santa Paws and Santa Claus became best friends at that magical time of the year. The movie has two types of inspiration, one is an Annie-esque inspiration of a girl in an orphanage and that is a musical and then it has the sense of Miracle on 34th Street, with Santa Claus who is in jeopardy and Santa Paws' best friend has to help save him. The Search for Santa Paws is very much a Christmas movie that is indirectly connected with The Santa Buddies; it is of course a movie that has beautiful puppies in it; the film is a little bit more of a human centric movie.


Question: Will we see a new Santa Buddies adventure every Christmas?

Robert Vince: I'd like too! I really enjoy coming up with Christmas movies- Christmas is a magical time of year and there hasn't been, in my view, a very good offering of Christmas movies for the audiences and hopefully we came up with something that works well for people.


Question: What is your favourite thing about Christmas?

Robert Vince: It has gotten to the point now where I really love that it's a time of year that people suspend their own interests and become more selfless and they don't go into the commercial side but more into dealing with the side of the human spirit which is there to help others; that side of Christmas means a lot to me and is part of the theme we are putting forward in the movie.


Question: How does the team go about animating the dogs faces- making them so life-like?

Robert Vince: When I started making the original Air Bud movies we didn't have 3D animation available to us and now we have CGI animation so that the characters come to life; it is similar to the difference between 2D animation and 3D animation; we have live action dogs that talk and the characters have a lot more depth and more character. This animation has opened up the movies a great deal for us because the animals become equal characters in the movie opposed to the sidekick characters they used to be in family movies.


Question: What was the most difficult part of making The Search for Santa Paws?

Robert Vince: I try not to talk about the difficult parts; I have never birthed a baby but I think it is kind of like that- you forget about the difficult parts, very quickly. What really excites me is when we receive feedback from the movies and it is well-received and we seem to be getting that from The Search for Santa Paws.
When you make a film and write it, as I write, produce and direct them, you come up with central themes and you hope they come across and with The Search for Santa Paws, they really did. One of the themes, that we were trying to get across, was Christmas Spirit; I kept watching all the old classic Christmas movies to tie in Christmas spirit. I remember writing down on a napkin, which I still have, "Christmas spirit is embodied in the hearts of children, not yet touched the fears, doubts and disappointments of the adult world." It's about the child, in all of us, who has hope, faith and that kindness that is not yet occluded by other factors in life. I always remember writing little sketches on napkins, the things that come to you from somewhere else; seeing them manifest themselves in a movie is very gratifying.


Question: Is that one of your favourite part of creating The Search for Santa Paws?

Robert Vince: Absolutely! This movie has some very common themes that you never know how they are going to do and how our children are going to capture them. I have to make a movie for two audiences, for children and of course their parents. The movie has to be complex enough for the parents and it has to be, I don't want to say simple because kids are very, very bright, but it cannot be confusing for kids, as well. It is an interesting act that I play, at all times.


Question: Can you talk about the Santa Buddies characters?

Robert Vince: We have a Pooley dog that plays Rasta; the Pooley dogs are the ones that look like Jamaicans. Then we have T-Money who is a Bulldog and Hagias who is a Scottish Dog- they are the sidekick characters. Then we have Santa Paws who is a grown up Great Pyrenees and then the Great Pyrenees puppy! Then of course we have the Elf dog who is a Jack Russell.

We have a lot of animals, in our movies, at all times! I always say my job stress is a little less than normal.


Question: How much input do you have in the bonus features on DVD and Blu-ray?

Robert Vince: Disney is really great and I am involved at all times, Disney is very collaborative and they know that we care about our franchise a great deal. We are involved; we don't necessarily make them all but we try to be involved as much as we can. Of course we are busy making movies so they have other folks who do a great job of the bonus features and we oversee it.


Interview by Brooke Hunter