Good family Christmas comedy

Rating: 7/10 (29 November 2003)

Elf was better than I expected, and when it got going, it became good. Nothing amazing, or spectacular, but good. It entails a charming comic charm and Will Ferrel was superb as Buddy. I do have one major gripe about this movie though, its production design (in the North Pole scenes). Its blatantly obvious it was low-budget, to me it had little charm, only the actors did that. I especially loathed the awful animatronics, the kind you'd see on a day-time BBC kids program, cheap plastic toys made to look integral with the actors, it was a major setback in my opinion. I think its $30m budget should have been bumped to $40m, and it would have made for more charming and magically inventive sets.
7/10