I bought the DVD for my young daughter for Christmas (called the Christmas Foal in the UK),as she likes films featuring animals.

However, all my family were very disappointed as the film was absolute rubbish.

• The acting was awful. I have seen better acting by most amateur dramatic societies.

• The script was very poor, a ten year old could have written a better screen play.

• You could not like the children in the film as their characters were downright rude and ungrateful. They obviously hadn't heard of the words 'please' and 'thank you'. You spent the whole film wondering when the Father would discipline them.

• The two villains were unbelievable as they were just completely stupid, they didn't have a brain between them.

• You would expect a film which features a horse in the title, and on the cover of the DVD,to have a lot more horse action. There was very little horse screen time.

Being someone who likes horses and loves Christmas films, there was the hope that 'The Christmas Foal' was good. Unfortunately 'The Christmas Foal' is one of those films where it is difficult to know where to begin criticising and be up all night doing it.

There are two things that stop it from being a complete pile of horse manure. One is the scenery, which is beautiful. The other is the horses, they are both cute and majestic in look and have the immense likability that the human characters lack. Sadly, these two good elements are also somewhat wasted. 'The Christmas Foal' is far too amateurishly filmed and edited (flat photography and haphazard editing) for the scenery to be properly enjoyed. Have seen films made for television that look better. The horses also don't have enough screen-time and when they were used they were poorly so.

As said, it is difficult to know where to start with the criticisms and one will find it even harder knowing when to end. Saying that the acting is woeful is being too kind, props are more animated. Most are stiff and ill at ease, the children are some of the most annoying for any film seen in recent memory and the villains are too hammy. The characters are incredibly poorly written, the horses are the only characters one halfway roots for and they're not in it enough.

Really disliked the children for reasons that have been summed up well already, condescending and annoying sums them up well. The villains are neither funny or menacing, instead they come over as idiots and don't fit within the film. The writing never sounds natural and will make even young children feel dumber and insulted.

In terms of the story, 'The Christmas Foal' is very thin and ridiculous. It's less than an hour and a half and it feels stretched, making the pace drag so much that it's tedious to sit through, so much so one seriously considers bailing out after 10 minutes (stuck with it because judging a film without seeing the whole thing is unfair). There is no warmth, heart or charm to the storytelling, even the Christmas spirit isn't noticeable. The music is forgettable at best and the direction isn't there.

Overall, a real mess apart from the scenery and the horses and even they deserved better. 2/10 Bethany Cox

Turned it on for my 89 yr old mom and I because she's a horse lover, but in the entire movie a horse is screen for about 8 minutes total, and the colt has about 2-3 minutes on screen maximum at the very end of the movie. The rest of the movie was just bad acting as if they read the scripts that morning and read them back to us.