Gremlins is a more cheerful Christmas movie than this downer.

Rating: 3/10 (18 December 2004)

"Christmas is a time to be extra jerk" is pretty much an attitude of every villains in every Christmas movie (even Die Hard 2). But the villain whose heart will eventually change by either ghosts, or Christmas-related miracle in Elf is not really someone you sympathize with. And that person is the Elf's father, which the audience will most likely hate him more than they like Elf.
"Will you tuck me in Dad?" "No, I will not tuck you in."
To be fair, Elf is a grown man, and it will be creepy to tuck him in. But my point is not whether or not the father should tuck his grown son in. The point is, what kind of writer/director would want to put that scene into their movie? What kind of reaction should we have? Why is it funny? Is it funny because Elf is being stupid? Is it funny because the father is feeling awkward? Is it funny because of their tone of voice? Or is this the climax scene? I can never tell.
But I am getting ahead of myself. The movie started out extremely cute. Elf and his adopted father are both characters that we can all love even before they say a word. And we continue to throughout the movie. That is the problem because, guess what? People don't want to see bad things happen to the characters they love. And the whole Elf being in New York and get tease and push around by people, though he didn't feel bad by it (because of his innocence, which makes us love him even more), frustrated me even more. There are also scene like when Elf want to give raccoon a hug but instead the raccoon bites him. That's not funny. That's awful.
The fake looking talking Penguin at the North Pole shows that the director and the production team didn't plan on making this movie a classic (and by all mean, it isn't) which is sad because with some more thought into it, this movie could have been so much better. May be even a good movie. Considering how well this movie made in the box office.
Everything about it is a downer. The snowball fight was mean and unrealistic. The kid in this movie is a very bad actor (which is strange for this kind of movie). Santa Clause talked like he's reading Declaration of Independent. The view of New York is not at all beautiful. And the love interest character has absolutely no dimension. The way she change her emotion from bitter goth to Legally Blonde in a split second is beyond the definition of the word believable.
I thought this was going to be a very funny movie for a whole family since its DVD release was hyped up so much (and consider the fact that it did very well in the box office). But it turn out to be too dumb for adult, too dark and harsh for kids, and too uncomfortable to watch for anyone in between. Cute idea. Sloppy (cross that, very bad) execution.
Panasit