Just in time for the holidays, or more accurately the secular shopping holidays that encompass about half the year now, comes the number one holiday movie from last year onto DVD. In the eternal cycle of Christmas cheer, Hollywood continues to make itself known as the purveyor of everything good and magical about Christmas.
“Elf,” that Will Ferrell movie before “Anchorman,” is released on DVD this week precariously before Thanksgiving, making a great turkey stuffer before it becomes a stocking stuffer.
Will Ferrell plays Buddy, a human raised in the North Pole by elves. After 30 odd years, he comes to the realization that he is not like the other elves and doesn’t quite fit into their magical little world.
In a quest to find his true self, Buddy treks to New York City to find his father, Walter (James Caan), who doesn’t even know he exists. Naturally, hilarity ensues as Buddy must conform to life outside of Santa’s workshop, in a world overrun with Christmas half the year but devoid of Christmas spirit.
As Christmas draws near and Buddy’s adjustment almost completely fails, he must make a daring rescue of Santa in Central Park while his father comes to terms with being a responsible family man.
Director Jon Favreau (“Made”), does an adequate job of maintaining the lightheartedness that is inherent in the film, which is certainly fairly easy considering the content. Buddy’s adventures have good pacing and some jokes are well set up.
But this is most certainly Will Ferrell’s film, designed especially to show off his best-known character, the oddball man-child. Ferrell is comfortable as Buddy and shows some promise of future great comedy. This movie definitely put him on the map and showed he was a moneymaker.
The problem with this role, and also with this summer’s “Anchorman,” is that it’s not anything we haven’t seen him do on his stint with “Saturday Night Live.” The man-child is good for some laughs over a short period of time, but not necessarily throughout a feature-length film. Will Ferrell is best when doing his character, but with some sinister or deeply weird edge to it – for instance, as Mugatu in “Zoolander.” With “Elf,” there is too much cutesiness and heartwarming mush that overcomes any excessive goofiness and borderline craziness that Ferrell might contain.
Sure, he has some laughs in the film, but certainly nothing memorable. And the laughs almost completely stop about halfway through the film anyway.
While not a bad film – even enjoyable at parts – ‘Elf’ is overall a child’s movie that should have been more. It is a good rental for the never-ending holiday season, but only worth purchasing if you truly enjoyed this film. There are some interesting DVD extras, such as karaoke and a couple of nice little games to play with your DVD remote, but only to put you in the Christmas mood. That is, if you really want to be in the Christmas mood after watching “Elf.”
Jason Bolte can be reached at [email protected].
