It's An Enjoyable Christmas Fantasy

Rating: 7/10 (7 December 2012)

I'm not the biggest fan of Will Ferrell, but in casting "Elf" someone had a brainstorm, because I have to admit that Ferrell was absolutely perfect in this role. He plays "Buddy the Elf," a human baby in an orphanage who accidentally hitches a ride in Santa's toy bag one Christmas Eve and finds himself at the North Pole, adopted by "Papa Elf" (Bob Newhart) who raises him as an elf. Of course, it isn't a good "fit," so to speak. As a human, Buddy is a lot bigger than your average elf and, finally realizing he's human, he sets out for New York City (with no knowledge of the world outside the North Pole) and sets out to find his father, who he's been told is Walter Hobbs (James Caan) - a big publishing executive working at the Empire State Building. Essentially, the story is about Buddy trying to fit into life in the real world, and to be honest, it's really quite enjoyable and sometimes even quite funny.
The cast all do quite well with their parts, although I thought that we didn't really need a love angle for Buddy, represented by Jovie (Zooey Deschanel) - who's adorably cute, but I'm not sure she was essential to the story. Every movie of this type, of course, needs a scrooge-type character to be reformed and filled with the Christmas spirit. Here, that was supposed to be Walter, but I honestly didn't find Walter to be scrooge-like enough. He seemed to be a basically nice guy who was himself just being overworked by an overbearing boss (in a limited role played by Michael Lerner.) I didn't get the jarring "turnaround" in Walter's attitude that you often get from this. He seemed to accept Buddy too easily - with a bit of encouragement from his wife (Mary Steenburgen.) Still, while some of the characters didn't hit home as powerfully as they could have, the performances were good and they added up to a fun story.
It was nice to see Ed Asner play a fairly important role as Santa in this, and the movie even managed to pay just a wee bit of homage to the TV special Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer, as Leon the Snowman who slid around at the North Pole looked basically like the sliding snowman who slid around and narrated Rudolf (although the narration for this movie, when necessary, was done by Papa Elf.) The animals in the woods at the North Pole also reminded me of the animals in Rudolf.
It's a cute story, good fun for the family in the Christmas season. (7/10)