Review
ELF
Starring Will Ferrel, Bob Newhart and Ed Asner.
Directed by John Favreau
Opens Friday, November 7
Check listings
Will Ferrell is hilarious because he’s so damn shameless. He proved it season after season in carrying the torch for Saturday Night Live, and put an exclamation point on it with a bare ass jog through Old School. This guy will do anything for a laugh.
And while abandoning all maturity and self-respect isn’t necessarily a pre-requisite for putting on the pointy shoes and tights of Elf, it certainly doesn’t hurt.
A fractured fairy tale with a holiday flavour, Elf tells the story of an orphaned infant who crawls into Santa’s sack of toys one Christmas Eve. Not-so-jolly old Saint Nick (Ed Asner, reprising his gruff Lou Grant character in the form of Mr. Claus), unaware of the little stowaway until he gets back to the North Pole, hands the child off to Papa Elf (Bob Newhart), who raises him as his own son.
But as the boy called Buddy (Ferrell) grows to almost three times the size of his fellow employees at Santa’s workshop, it’s apparent he doesn’t fit in. That’s when he’s told the truth about his real father (James Caan), a cranky workaholic publisher of children’s books, alive and living a miserable life in Manhattan.
So, with a snowglobe of the New York skyline as his compass, Buddy sets off for the Big Apple. And while his childlike innocence is put to the test (not to mention his co-ordination – you’ll love Ferrell’s attempt to ride the escalator for the first time), the man-turned-elf gives N.Y.C., not to mention his frosty biological father, a refreshing dose of Ho-Ho-Ho.
Ferrell’s sugar-high enthusiasm (he loves to guzzle soft drinks and maple syrup) carries Elf to heights it has no business reaching. He takes a pretty thin setup and, via the surprisingly innovative mind of actor-director Jon Favreau (who, if he wasn’t so mindful of maintaining a family-friendly appeal, could easily have transformed this into a deliciously black comedy) prances towards holiday classic territory.
Just goes to show – the best gifts sometimes come in very odd packages. |
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