MOVIE REVIEW

Elf  (2003)

Starring: Will Ferrell, James Caan, Mary Steenburgen
Director: Jon Favreau

Rating: PG

Studio: New Line Cinema

Release Date: 11.07.03

Review Posted: 11.07.03

Spoilers: None

By Sara M. Fetters

Cheerless "Elf" a Lump of Yule Tide Coal

Every now and then, I can’t help but feel a little like Ebenezer Scrooge when it comes to watching movies. I sit in a darkened theater, the audience around me eating the film up, all the while I slowly melt into the seat, fuming that I have to endure such a chunk of cow manure. “Scary Movie 3” was like that, and I was more than happy to admit it, diluting my attack on the realization that “Airplane”-style scatter-shot comedy just isn’t my bag.

Well, the gloves are off this time around, for no matter how many different ways you look at it, former “Saturday Night Live” funnyman Will Ferrell’s Christmas comedy “Elf” is a big lump of Yule tide coal. What’s worse is that it shouldn’t be, the film offering up a sweet, good-natured premise that really shouldn’t fail. But after a sprightly opening, “Elf” collapses into a bilge pile of holiday movie cliché. It is a mean, aggressive comedy that purports to wear its heart on its sleeve but instead forgets it out back in the trash heap behind the theater’s back door. No bones about it, I hated this movie.

Ferrell stars as Buddy, a human who snuck into Santa’s (Edward Asner) toy sack 30 years prior. Subsequently, he was raised by Papa Elf (Bob Newhart), the big guy’s chief sleigh mechanic, as just another young elf running around making toys on the North Pole. But, while Buddy’s heart is in the right place, his six-foot-plus frame in a world of four-foot toy makers doesn’t quite fit, and everyone except for him sees it. Needless to say, Papa finally has to reveal to his devastated son that he is really a human being, and that his real father lives deep within the heart of New York City.

That father turns out to be children’s publishing magnate Walter (James Caan), and he just happens to be on the naughty list this coming Christmas. Buddy is sure he can fix that. Having not even met the man, his heart is still full of love for him all the same and that should be more than enough to bring the callous publisher back into the fold of the righteous. But the big city isn’t at all what this too-tall former elf expects, his father at first loath to call this walking man-child his son. Yet whether it is working at Gimbel's and romancing the sweetly beguiling Jovey (Zooey Deschanel), or winning the heart of his half brother Michael (Daniel Tay) in a high-powered snowball battle in Central Park, Buddy manages to ingratiate himself with all around him.

Um, that’s pretty much it for a plot. Sure, there is the big conflict going on in “Elf” about whether or not Walter will get his Christmas spirit back, and there is a big to-do near the end with Buddy frantically trying to fix Santa’s wounded sleigh and save the holiday, but these seem more like afterthoughts than actual plot points. Besides, in a movie like this, the outcome of those struggles is rather self-evident. No, the big thing going on in “Elf” is the fish-out-of-water shenanigans of its ‘Crocodile’ Dundee-like protagonist. His sweet earnestness and never-say-day valor in the face of overwhelming odds is supposed to be heartwarming. For me, it was simply bone crushing.

Writer David Berenbaum’s script knows all the moves of holiday classics like “Miracle on 34th Street” and “It’s a Wonderful Life” but shows none of their intelligence or heart. It is a crash-course in brutalistic physical comedy of the absurd, the movie spending more time making fun of its hero than it does garnering our sympathy for him or his quest. It’s like 90-minutes of the worst “Saturday Night Live” skit imaginable, yet told with all the earnestness of an Oscar-winning epic.

It does not help in the slightest that Ferrell wears exactly one, puppy dog-like expression on his face for the movie’s entire running time, or delivers his lines with a flat, faux childishness that’s almost creepy. And while he is a gifted physical comedienne – one startling sequence between him and a cab did actually make me laugh out loud – he isn’t a very good actor. As Buddy turns more and more into a slightly overbearing unintelligent stalker, I found that I was finding the character to be far too disturbing to be endearing. Ferrell has no idea how to disengage this reaction, relying upon his one mannerism of detached over-exuberance to carry him through.

What more, the movie wastes the talents of a plethora of great actors. Caan and Newhart come out the best, but only because Berenbaum’s script actually allows them both a moment or two to stretch their thespian legs. Not so well off are Deschanel, Asner (who must be the most men-spirited Santa ever put to film in a family movie) and Mary Steenburgen, all stuck with caricatures so thinly fleshed out that each is at a loss to make them even remotely memorable.

What’s really a pity, though, is how great this movie could have been. “Elf” opens with delirious brilliance up in the North Pole that got me thinking I was about to see something surprisingly wonderful. Noted indie actor and director Jon Favreau stages these sequences in a Rankin & Bass world of wonders, purposefully referencing the stop-motion excellence of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and “Santa Claus is Coming to Town.” These ten opening minutes are perfectly sublime, a true testament to Rusty Smith’s production design, Kelvin Humenny’s art direction and Johanne Hubert’s set decoration. If anything, I wanted more of the movie to be set here in this wondrously created world. But “Elf” unfortunately treads back into a New York we’ve seen time and time again, a blasé collage of sights and sounds that could fit into every other holiday picture that has taken place in this time-worn mecca of film civilization.

Not that going to New York would be so bad if the movie had anything to say or show us. Instead, all Berenbaum and Favreau can do is set up a series of sight gags that grow more and more vicious as “Elf” progresses. And while they thankfully dismiss with much of the potty and bathroom humor that has become so popular in recent family comedies, they substitute it for a winsome stupidity that they apparently want the audience to embrace.

Based on the crowd I saw it with, maybe they’re right. They sure as heck laughed far more than I did. Maybe things like assured storytelling and intelligently drawn characters aren’t what audiences are looking for anymore. Maybe all they need are little people viciously beating up six-foot idiots or simpletons pouring syrup on their morning spaghetti. But I don’t, and I refuse to accept that the majority of those that are out there do. “Elf” isn’t Christmas cheer, it’s Christmas gruel, and here’s hoping it finds its way to the sewers as fast as possible.

Rating: ê  (out of 4)

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