“Make work your favorite”
I rather hate myself right now. I just re-watched Elf for the first time since I really got into film and was thinking it would be a great film to rift on because it is a stupid movie and I have not done a Christmas review where I tear the film to pieces yet. Unfortunately, I discovered that Elf really is not that bad and that it has several good points.
The main problems with the movie is it is zany, silly, the film itself seems to have ADHD (and I should know since I have ADHD) and many things do not make any sense. Now this movie is not a great movie or creative film, the best example of that is The Santa Clause. However, it is not as bad as The Santa Clause 3 which I think is terrible.
The premise is that one year while Santa was making his yearly rounds, during his last stop at an orphanage, a baby escaped from his crib and headed for Santa’s bag to get a teddy bear inside. The baby ends up being taken back to the North Pole and an older elf volunteers to raise him…like an elf but since he is human, he is not the best at doing certain elf things—sort of like a reference to Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. The movie makes several references to famous and classic Christmas films. When he is around 30, he finds out he is a human and Santa explains to him that in more or less words, he is a love child. Stop and think about this folks, a Christmas movie….a kid’s PG Christmas movie, where the title character in which the whole movie revolves around is a love child. Personally, I think it is fantastic because, A) this has never been done before in a Christmas movie and 2) it teaches kids a bit, about how real life is.
He walks from the North Pole to New York in about 24 hours. This is one of the stupid things about the film—it is vastly unrealistic. Some would argue that since it is a movie with Santa, it is already unrealistic; however, I am talking about everything else being equal to our universe. Just because he was raised by elves does not make him magical like an elf. I can buy him being able to create toys and make decorations out of anything in a small amount of time. What I can’t buy is a human that for thirty years has ate nothing but sugar and fat and is not diabetic, a human that can walk over a thousand miles in only one day, and a human that can make a pile of perfect snow balls in under five minutes.
He goes to New York to reunite with his dad, who is married and has another son. Buddy’s (the main character), mom died years ago and all he has left is his dad.
I love how the trailer makes you think the movie is about some crazy person who believes he is an elf rather than a movie where he really did live at the North Pole.
I really like a few things about the film. The romantic-comedy subplot tangent is really sweet. In addition, the girl is played by Zooey Deschanel who I absolutely adore. I love her voice, and in this movie she sings, I like her acting style and I think she is wicked cute and bloody gorgeous. I also like all the references to other great Christmas movies. There is a scene where Buddy is on a bridge that is reminiscent of It’s a Wonderful Life, Buddy’s dad is a Scrooge type character with his boss being even more like Scrooge, and the movie makes fun of Rankin and Bass in good fun. I like the overall message of the film about faith and hope and all that jazz, yeah it has all been said hundreds of times before and in more creative and artistic ways but this is still good. The film also does have its laughs and whimsical moments.
However, a lot of the\whimsy goes out the window due to the over zany and silly nature of the film that really can take away from all its good points. In addition, I am not a big fan of Will Ferrell, I do not hate him I just do not like most of his movies. My favorite movie with him is Stranger Than Fiction but you can’t really call that a “Will Ferrell movie”
In the end this movie is hard to rate as it has its good points and its bad points. I am going to settle for a 2.8 out 0f 5 stars.
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