Arthur Christmas

*NOTE: Not to be confused with Arthur's Perfect Christmas, a 2000 traditionally animated Christmas special based on the 1996 PBS animated TV series Arthur, in turn based on the 1976 book series of the same name by Marc Brown.*

***Arthur Christmas*** is a 2011 British-American 3D computer-animated fantasy film and was the first Sony Pictures Animation film co-produced with Aardman Animations. Directed by Sarah Smith and co-directed by Barry Cook, the film stars the voices of James McAvoy, Hugh Laurie, Bill Nighy, Jim Broadbent, Imelda Staunton, and Ashley Jensen. It was released on 11 November 2011, in the United Kingdom, and on 23 November 2011, in the United States.

## Plot

Everyone knows that, each Christmas, Santa Claus delivers presents to every last child on Earth. What everyone doesn't know is that Santa accomplishes the feat with a very high-tech operation beneath the North Pole. But when the unthinkable happens, and Santa misses one child out of hundreds of millions, someone has to save the day. It's up to Arthur (James McAvoy), Santa's youngest son, to deliver a present to the forgotten tyke before Christmas morning dawns.

## Why It Rocks

1. The movie gave an excellent example of what the holiday season is really about.
2. Most of the characters have development and depth into them, like discovering that the North Pole has a long lineage of Santas.
3. The cameos of Pez, Shaun the Sheep and Chop Socky Chooks are nice inclusions.
4. Grandsanta points out how the world has changed though out the years. That could be the part that parents can relate to the most.
5. Arthur himself is a really likable protagonist.
6. Arthur reading Gwen's letter and writing her back was heartwarming.
7. There's a strong conflict throughout the film on the right way for Santa to do his job, where Steve wants to be more technologically advanced while Grandsanta wants to do things the old fashioned way. But at the centre of the debacle is Arthur, who doesn't care how it's done or how it gets praised - he just wants to get the gift to the kid.
8. The picture of a young Arthur sitting on his father's lap is also heartwarming.
9. Sarah Smith has really nice directing, since she co-founded Locksmith Animation in 2014 with Aardman executive Julie Lockhart, and with the financial backing of Elisabeth Murdoch, in order to direct *Ron's Gone Wrong*.
10. Really creative writing.
11. Excellent score of Harry Gregson-Williams.
12. Arthur's slippers and the red sleigh are cool looking.
13. Great and well-made animation that has a cool art style for Sony Pictures Animation and Aardman Animation.
14. Throughout the film, it doesn't have any *real* villains. At first, Steve Claus seemed to be a villain, but he was just a corrupt man.
15. Funny humor, like how the animals have suddenly been floating.

## The Only Two Bad Qualities

1. Despite being produced by Aardman Animation, the film doesn't contain their typical art style, which is a bit unusual, even if the art style in the film isn't bad at all. However, the film was not animated in stop-motion, or the fact that it was mainly animated by Sony, so the final artstyle we saw was justified, and not many people would consider the artstyle a flaw, just like *Flushed Away*.
2. Considering that Justin Bieber is one of the most hated musicians in history, his cover for the song "Santa Claus is Comin' to Town" certainly doesn't age well.

## Reception

*Arthur Christmas* was well-received. It holds an approval rating of 92% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 169 reviews, with an average score of 7.20/10. The consensus reads, "Aardman Animations broadens their humor a bit for Arthur Christmas, a clever and earnest holiday film with surprising emotional strength.". On Metacritic, the film has a score of 69 out of 100 based on 32 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

## Trivia

* This is Aardman's first film produced outside of DreamWorks.

## External Links

* Template:IMDb
* Template:Rotten Tomatoes