12/4-Elf (2003)

What a delightful movie.

Elf begins with Bob Newhart (Papa Elf) telling the story of how Buddy the Elf came to be.  You see, about 30 years ago, Santa was delivering presents to an orphanage (where the cribs looked like prison cells), and baby Buddy broke out of his crib and crawled into Santa's sack (again, yes, they unfortunately call it his sack) looking for a teddy bear.  The baby is somehow not found until Santa is back at the pole, at which point Bob Newhart decides to adopt Buddy.

As Buddy grew up, he clearly didn't fit in.  After overhearing some elves talk about him being human, he runs home and confronts his dad, who tells him the truth, how he was found in an orphanage and who is real parents are.  So Buddy decides to leave for New York City, where his birth father lives.  But watch out, Santa warns, because Buddy's father is on the naughty list.

Before talking about the non-north pole part of the movie, I just wanted to say that I really dug the aesthetic of the north pole.  Everything had a kind of obviously fake, film set feel to it that made it seem sort of like those old claymation holiday specials.  I guess it helps that there actually are claymation characters hanging out in the north pole.  My favorite is a southern gentlemen snowman named Leon.

Now, I may just be a simple southern snowman,
but I do declare I have some worldly knowledge to give

Around this time, we start to get glimpses of the father in his work place, and boy is he a dick.  I mean, he's comically evil.  Evil is not the right word because he's not actively doing nefarious deeds, but he only cares about money to a cartoonish degree.  I'm a little surprised that we didn't see dollar signs in his eyes at any point in the movie.  To give you some examples, in his first scene, he denies donating books to a children's organization run by nuns and in his next, he refuses to reprint a batch of books because it would cost a boatload, even though the last two pages of the book were blank, a mistake he even made.  "They're just kids, they won't know the difference!"  He says in defense of his decision.

So Buddy arrives in New York and the movie basically becomes a fish-out-water film that's centered on Christmas, which isn't a bad thing.  Will Ferrell does the wide-eyed simpleton so well that all these gross and dumb things he does are endearing in way.  Particularly gagging moments are when he eats handrail gum an when he shoves his pop tart-marshmallow-sprinkles-syrup spaghetti mash in his mouth.  Really, the physical humor throughout the film is just great.

The rest of the movie plays out basically how you might expect.  He meets a cute girl (Zooey Deschanel, who is blonde in the movie and that's weird), has a fight with a fake Santa (poor Lego New York City!), and is eventually able to win over his father and everyone else.  Here's the fight in question, which contains one of my favorite lines from the movie.

Other things I liked:

-"Smiling is my favorite!"

-"I just wanted to meet you and thought maybe you might want to meet me."

-Director's cameo, Favreau always puts himself in his movies and I never care.

-Andy Richter and Kyle Gass playing terrible children's book authors.

-Peter Dinklage

-Matt Walsh

-Four horsemen bit

-Buddy is Sasquatch joke

Seriously, this gets me every time.

And the end left my face hurting, I was smiling so much.  When everyone starts singing together, I got goosebumps all over and even she a few tears of joy.  It was simply a pleasure to watch this movie.

Rating on the feel-good-o-meter: 8 out of 10 hugs