Has its moments

Rating: 5/10 (4 December 2006)

Will Farrell seems to have taken a page from the Jim Carrey look-at-me school of acting. People like Carrey, and Farrell, and Bette Midler were probably the kind of people who, as small children, would jump onto the empty stage in malls and put on a show for their delighted parents, while other patrons walked by scratching their heads. It's not to say that these people aren't occasionally funny, but when your entire celebrity is built on self-referentialism, you'll hit more wrong notes than right ones. I have a hunch that they did many, many takes of each scene in this movie.
Anyway, the funniest parts of this movie come from the veteran actors themselves: Steenburgen, Asner, Newhart, and Caan. Each of them has perfect straight-man timing to Farrell's manic funny-man Elf. Steenburgen's spaghetti breakfast, Asner's crabby Santa, Newhart's deadpan delivery and Caan's irritable reactions are all priceless moments. Farrell is basically himself, the same person he plays in every movie, and yet even given his two-dimensional portrayal of a man raised as an elf, his peculiarly funny mannerisms are somehow never tiresome. With a manic laugh or flick of his eyes he can be humorous, but he often seems bereft of an inner critic and tends to overdo it. For instance, the dinner scene is hilarious ("Is there sugar in maple syrup?"..."Yes"..."then YES!"), but Farrell ruins the lighthearted banter by belching for a full minute, a scene that should have been left on the cutting room floor.
All in all, not a bad Christmas film, although the entire Central Park scene looks like it was written into the script at the last minute. It's all a bit overdone, but then they had to have some warm fuzzies or it wouldn't be a Christmas movie.