I love the Holiday Season. Some of my favorite memories with my family and friends have been made sledding down hills, sawing down the Christmas tree, and exchanging gifts. I also love Christmas movies and specials. “Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer”, “Love Actually”, “Scrooged”- These are some of my favorite movies that I love sharing with friends and family. But there is one movie this season that I detest with a passion. One which has become an inescapable cultural phenomena whose hatred of has earned me much scorn from my peers.
I'm talking of course, about “Elf”.
I have been vocal before about my hatred of “Elf”. The Will Ferrell flick about a man who is raised by elves trying to find is father is in the center of the cultural zeitgeist of the Christmas Season, embodying everything I hate about modern comedy. As a side note, I am actually a fan of Will Ferrell, as “The Other Guys” and “Anchorman” are some of my favorite comedies. But it is the laziness and poor storytelling of the movie that land “Elf” on my “Never to watch again” list. Here are a few things I wrong with the Christmas Catastrophe that is “Elf”
1) It’s creepy as hell.
The impact of most the jokes in this flick rely on the audience accepting the fact that this grown man has the emotional maturity and naiveté of essentially a child. However, the story does not exactly portray this fact well. It is goddamn creepy for Buddy to follow Zooey Deschanel’s voice into the bathroom and sing with her while she’s in the shower, and quite frankly I’m surprised that didn’t end Buddy in jail right then and there. This isn’t like Tom Hank’s “Big” where you see the sort of whimsy of a child let loose in the real, adult world, but rather you see a grown man trying to “fit in” with children.
2) Santa and the elves are dicks to Buddy.
Like seriously. I think my first question would be that if the Santa in this movie knows the location of every single child, why wouldn’t he just bring Buddy back to the adoption agency immediately once they discover that there’s been a stowaway in the bag? There must have been some search for Buddy once he disappeared from the orphanage, and it’s probably right to assume that Buddy has been part of the FBI’s “missing children” database since his disappearance. Santa shouldn’t be an accidental kidnapper. What’s worse, we see the other elves talking about Buddy behind his back, and Father Christmas dropping the gigantic bomb that he was put up for adoption, his mother is dead, and his father is ON THE FUCKING NAUGHTY LIST. These are things that were known ALL ALONG, which Santa decided to tell Buddy as an adult. I think that would have been important to know in the formative years of one’s teens, but then again, I’m not a child psychologist. Finally, you see Buddy having to walk all the way from the North Pole to NYC. If only there was some other vehicle which could have transported him there faster, like a magic sleigh or something…
3) The message is too "in your face" and sugary sweet.
CHRISTMAS IS ABOUT THE PEOPLE YOU LOVE AND NOT ABOUT MONEY. TO SHOW YOU THIS, WE WILL HAVE A FATHER CHARACTER WHO ONLY CARES ABOUT MONEY, MATCHED WITH A SON WHO HE IS NEGLECTING AND AN ADULT SON WHO WANTS TO SHOW HIM THE ERROR OF HIS WAYS. HE WILL QUIT HIS JOB FOR HIS SON IN ORDER TO SHOW THAT MONEY ISN’T EVERYTHING. BUDDY FALLS IN LOVE WITH ANOTHER “TRUE FAN” OF CHRISTMAS. EVERYONE LIVES HAPPILY EVER AFTER.
It’s so contrite and open-and-close that it’s almost disingenuous. It’s too childish for a more adult comedy and too complex for a solely children’s movie. It misses the conflict and meaningfulness of “A Christmas Story” or “It’s a Wonderful Life” by expecting me to believe that such strong feelings are developed between characters in the period of a few days. I don’t get it.
4) The jokes are annoying and unfunny.
I have said this before and I will say this again: Loud and gross ≠ funny. There’s nothing comedic to me about Ferrell’s constant shouting or putting syrup on everything. The actual laughs I got from this movie were from the exchanges between Buddy and the outside world, and that was all dialogue. But its attempts at physical comedy are failures. Yes you can throw a snowball hard, but that doesn’t necessarily count as funny. I would have to say the funniest part of this movie is when Buddy first gets to New York and takes all the signs and saying of New Yorkers literally.
5) It's literally everywhere.
Ho-ho-holy shit you cannot avoid this movie around Christmas. From internet memes to coffee cups to the movie itself being on television 24/7 from December 1st to the 25th, it is impossible to avoid. It is as much of a tradition in American households as hot chocolate and Christmas Trees, and to challenge it is to commit blasphemy. I know that the result of this article will be many an angry message from friends (especially you Meredith), and if you share it, perhaps you could share in this collective label of social pariah.
So that’s that. With Christmas only a few days away, I wish you a happy, “Elf”-less holiday season.
SANTAAAAAAAAAAAA
