At the beginning of the third act of Elf, a 2003 Christmas comedy directed by Jon Favreau, the titular character Buddy, played by Will Ferrell, condescends to and eggs on a little person, played by Peter Dinklage, by insistently calling him an elf in spite of repeated cues of how brazenly offensive that is –ultimately resulting in a fight. Despite the beating he takes, Buddy doesn’t take anything away from this exchange, still calling him an elf after the fact. And the sequence is shot and staged so as to emphasize Dinklage’s proportions for comedic effect: long takes of him at the end of a conference table literally dwarfed by everyone around him, then standing up and charging at Buddy on top of the table framed at a low angle to better evoke the child-like nature of this action. It is pretty uncomfortable to watch, the general attitude towards Dinklage’s dwarfism not more than a step above just pointing and gawking at him. And this in a movie that is a beloved holiday classic to many.
The general reception to Elf has perplexed me for about sixteen years now. I don’t think I thought much of it one way or the other when I first saw it at twelve –it got a few laughs out of me, had some nice music, and may have instigated my adolescent crush on Zooey Deschanel (though The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy was what cemented it). But I never thought of it as a particularly great Christmas movie, certainly not next to childhood favourites like The Muppet Christmas Carol, the original How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and The Santa Clause (another one which I’ve soured on over the years). And yet all these years later it remains perhaps the most iconic Christmas movie of the twenty-first century, repeatedly circulating in annual cable broadcasts alongside It’s a Wonderful Life, A Christmas Story, and the Rankin/Bass specials, as well as spawning its’ own Broadway musical adaptation and an animated spin-off that’s been gaining a kind of cult acclaim in its own right.
But why? Why this movie of all things? It’s not the worst holiday movie to be so popularly embraced (that probably remains the Ron Howard/Jim Carrey Grinch adaptation), but it’s not very good. It’s a persistently confused film, never sure if it wants to be a whimsical, sentimental movie for kids or an outrageous adult comedy in the vein of Ferrell’s other work; it’s dated as all hell, both in the textual comic bits that don’t hold up and some obnoxious editing, a lack of stylistic grounding, and hack soundtrack choices. At the same time, the idea of Elf is very strong, the basic premise instantly feeling like such a classic that I’m shocked it wasn’t actually a childrens’ book beforehand, like it becomes in-film at the end. Could it be that the idea more than the movie itself is what people are attached to? After all, that seems to be what the subsequent versions are more indebted to. Could the movie itself merely be remembered as the source of that, and for a single meme that has cultivated a life of its own independent of Elf?
I don’t think so. The movie gets plenty of replay each year. It still frequently appears on lists of great holiday specials. Surely, there’s something there that I’m missing; something that endears this dumb Christmas comedy that clearly never intended to become a perennial favourite, to thousands of people, especially from my age demographic who grew up with it. Is it just millennial nostalgia? Is it a deficit of Christmas movies with strong identities? Or is it something more?
To get to the bottom of this I feel I must consider the individual components that make up that identity of Elf, starting with what was probably its’ biggest sell at the time: Will Ferrell. In 2002, Ferrell left Saturday Night Live at the height of his popularity there. He had been that era’s breakout star of the program, known for particularly broad characters and caricatures with a heightened immaturity in the vein of his SNL elders Adam Sandler and Chris Farley -but with an added degree of absurdism. This particular kind of character translated to his early movie roles while he was with SNL like A Night at the Roxbury and Zoolander: over-the-top comic figures with tendencies towards obnoxious childlike behaviour -which sounds like a dig, but it was actually in-line with a lot of our comic tastes in the early 2000s that other comedians like the aforementioned Sandler and Jack Black played into as well.
Elf was a vehicle for Ferrell, initially conceived for a movie star comedian and then later developed for Ferrell specifically. That was its’ chief purpose, more than any story or character or thematic details; and it serves that well in playing to Ferrell’s comedy brand. Buddy, the human raised by elves, is a perfect man-child archetype: he’s loud and obnoxious with no sense of boundaries, exceptionally naïve to even basic intuition and lacking in any social grace. This isn’t mandated by the plot -outside of his general ignorance of human society and customs, there’s no reason for him to have such a stunted development when most of the elves he was raised with seem relatively normal and well adjusted- it’s purely so Ferrell can act out the kind of schtick he’s best known for: screaming inappropriately in the middle of a busy mall, whining like a baby after accidentally ingesting perfume, belching for an obscene stretch of time, and always making himself the centre of attention.
I don’t think I ever really found this kind of comedy funny, but it was popular with audiences at the time, adults as well as kids -just look to Ferrell’s other early post-SNL movie Old School. But for me it doesn’t hold up, and I would think it wouldn’t for others, given the changing nature and trends of comedy movies in the last decade and a half. We’re less inclined to laugh at that particular kind of innocent (though not really) imbecile, and Buddy is exactly that. Ferrell would do better in the years that followed, mostly in his collaborations with Adam McKay, crafting characters and heightened realities and a smarter sense of satire that better suited Ferrell’s pace of humour and unique delivery. And yet there’s something people do like about Buddy distinct from being just another Will Ferrell character. What is that? He’s neither funny nor charming, and in 2020 hindsight is more than a little problematic (remember that in the film he exposes himself to one woman and creeps on another in the shower while singing the worst Christmas song).
Perhaps it’s the whimsy, that unabashed love of everything Christmas extending to every facet of his lifestyle. Or maybe his child-like wonder. Most of Buddy’s childish behaviour I find obnoxious and off-putting, but there is that glimmer of heartwarming youthful awe when he sees the Rockefeller Christmas Tree that gets to the heart of what he is meant to represent. Could it even be just his appearance, which is quite striking, and again seems to prematurely imply an iconic Christmas character.
Will Ferrell isn’t solely responsible though, and it’s sometimes forgotten given how the film has come to be so brazenly associated with him that Elf was also one of the earliest creative efforts of another figure who’s gone on to become a big deal in his profession. Jon Favreau had been around in Hollywood for over a decade but Elf was only his second time in the directors’ chair and his first big studio film. It is very likely that without it, he would never have gotten Iron Man and thus never would have become one of Disneys’ golden boy directors –for good or ill. It may well be the most important movie in his career as a filmmaker.
Of course Favreau is not a very interesting director, not one to leave a noteworthy stamp on the movies he directs in either narrative or technical components. The one characteristic you could potentially link to Favreau the filmmaker, an abundance of CG animation, isn’t really in play this early in his career –excepting in that brief interlude where Buddy interacts with a stop-motion environment at the North Pole that may predict the animated worlds of Favreau’s Jungle Book and Lion King remakes (albeit much better here for not being in any way concerned with hyper-realism). Interestingly, according to Favreau, that aesthetic was something he was quite passionate about, and he had to fight for it to NOT be all CG. But Favreau’s direction is insubstantial, competent for a mid-2000s comedy, his choices mostly in-line with sensibilities of the time, as unremarkable as they may be. It’s certainly proof he can handle a major studio movie, perhaps a trial run for Iron Man, but it really could have been made just the same by anybody, there’s nothing that Favreau adds to make it stand out.
At least not from an immediately identifiable or (dare I say) auteur standpoint. As it turns out, he did contribute a bunch of little things that were significant. He provided an uncredited rewrite to make the initially darker script more family-friendly (accounting perhaps for the tonal inconsistencies). Favreau is responsible for the Rankin/Bass inspired aesthetic of the North Pole (in my opinion, the movies’ strongest choice), he wrote in the opportunities for Deschanel to sing, and much of the climax came late in the development process from him. None of these are particularly inspired or even organic, but they are aspects of the movie that have had resonance with its’ fans. And surely, as much as I dislike this version of Elf, I can’t imagine I would have liked more the version that Favreau first encountered. No one needs a dark Elf.
And then there’s New York City, as key a feature of this movie as Ferrell. In Elf, New York is both a romantic idealized metropolis, a city of limitless possibility, and also an encompassing symbol of cynicism, capitalist avarice, joylessness, and urban dysfunction -essentially both most culturally popular interpretations of the Big Apple. New York was already associated with one classic Christmas story, Miracle on 34th Street, a legacy that Elf acknowledges by setting a chunk of its’ movie at Gimbels, the notorious department store enemy of Macy’s in that film (despite that company having closed in 1987) -in a choice that would seem to prop up Elf as compatible to Miracle. That aside though, New York is a necessary part of this movie, and it’s indeed because of those cultural stereotypes that the journey of Buddy wouldn’t really fit anywhere else.
But there are plenty of stories out there about the reality of New York not living up to its reputation from the perspective of an outsider coming in. Is there anything unique to this movies’ portrait of the city that endears it to anyone? I mean, Christmas in New York is pretty, but Elf is hardly the first movie to showcase that. And yet, there is something to this Christmas in New York and this specific era for New Yorkers that sets it apart in all respects from what came before and after, and I expect we all knew it was coming. Elf came out in 2003, but it began shooting during the Christmas season of 2002, just a little over a year out from 9/11, and the city was still reeling. Remembering that context does shine a bit of light on the New York of this movie, and its’ New Yorkers. That aforementioned cynicism and joylessness, it isn’t just a New York staple in this vicinity to a world-changing terrorist attack, there’s a meaning to it. It becomes a comment on a wounded city, the obstacles Buddy runs into there, the meanness or aversion of people from his father to those security guards mere symptoms, and all the more important for him to heal it through the spirit of Christmas. At least theoretically.
Because in the end, it could be that audiences don’t see that potential reading and just gravitate towards Elf because of its Christmas iconography and its own illustration of the Christmas mythos -particularly Santa Claus and the associated ephemera. Including Santa in your holiday movie is a sure-fire way to get it at least some replay, because people just love seeing various interpretations of the signature Christmas myth. It’s that power of nostalgia inherent to the concept of Santa Claus, that cross-cultural narrative that we collectively partake in that attracts our curiosity like no other fictional figure. And it is the part of Elf that at least to some degree I can get on board with. As much as Elf’s North Pole, elves, and workshop is just a live-action riff on the Rankin/Bass specials, it is a world charming to look at and I do kinda find the Chipmunk-inspired elf voices funny. There’s something too in Buddy, as audience surrogate being a part of that world, even if he (literally) doesn’t fit in. In a way, it’s another variant of the kid fantasy of being whisked away to a magical world and joining that very childhood-oriented mythology. It’s an effect not too distinct from The Santa Clause’s children-cast-as-elves choice which more literally gave children a role and degree of ownership within that lore. All of this is of course just a small part of the movie though. It’s not fifteen minutes in before Buddy leaves for New York and the Santa Claus/Elves/kid-in-a-candy-store magical aesthetic disappears until the end.
However, a lot of Buddys’ actions separate from his quest to bond with his father are informed by that permeating connection to Christmas fantasy –it’s the chief joke of his character. And as mundane as the bulk of the movies’ dressing is, Buddy at least carries that whimsical ideology of the North Pole with him. It is there, attached to the tired fish-out-of-water gags and man-child routines, even as it nearly becomes drowned out in their company. That nebulous spirit of Christmas and sense of wonder though is more memorable than his Will Ferrell antics: his Christmas display at Gimbel’s, his chat with the little girl at the pediatrician, even his date night –sure that “Throne of Lies” line and the assault of the mall Santa has stuck in peoples’ consciousness (not nearly as funny as people remember it), but so too has the image of him waving to the crowds from the back of Santa’s sleigh as it takes off into the sky. And on the subject, I appreciate that while Buddy is sometimes remembered as “saving Christmas” in this movie, he doesn’t actually do much in the climax, and it’s really the people whose spirit allows Santa’s sleigh to fly, another metaphor for New York coming together in the aftermath of tragedy –and specifically it’s James Caan, who’d been the grumpy, humourless dad the whole way through. It’s actually a great close to his character arc (more believable than his walking out of a meeting for Buddy in any case) and one of the better beats of the movie.
Also, Ed Asner plays Santa in this, and I’d be lying if I said he wasn’t one of my favourite movie Santas. A bit of a curmudgeon (as all Asner characters are), but charismatic and sincere like a kindly grandpa. He makes the best of a lot of hacky dialogue, and his Ray’s Pizza monologue is the funniest bit in the movie for me. I really wish he and Bob Newhart were given more screen-time.
So here I am. I’ve attempted to dissect the key elements of Elf that might reveal why it is so beloved by so many. And perhaps I have found some compelling reasons, but more importantly, in the process I realized that it was really not a worthy endeavour -certainly not for a film like this. Watching Elf for this piece, I remained convinced it was a bad movie -it was an awkward, unpleasant experience to sit through; but in the process of mulling it over and considering its’ qualities I found that it’s really just a perfect mediocrity, and there isn’t anything wrong with that.
Elf doesn’t hold up in a number of regards, there are aspects of it that must be interrogated, but it’s not egregious in its’ offenses or lacklustre sensibilities either. It even manages to be entertaining from time to time and holds value in some of its not entirely listless sentiment. Ultimately, it is a story about a man who goes about trying to make a cynical world just a little bit more joyful. I don’t think it at all works, and in fact that the movie trips over its own feet in expressing this, but there’s something to be said for that kind of a mission statement regardless. The movies’ most famous line, “the best way to spread Christmas cheer is singing loud for all to hear” speaks to this rebuttal of modern societal disenchantment. In its’ own way, Elf just wants to inject a little bit of magic and old fashioned Christmas spirit into a world that seems to want nothing of the sort. And it’s hard not to see how that resonates in a powerful way with people living in such a grim world -hell, the idea of it certainly resonates with me.
Elf is a movie that never clicked with me, but I’m glad that it did with others. So by all means, let it be immortalized -once again, it’s definitely not the worst holiday movie to be so. Hell, maybe I’ll even like the inevitable remake. But until then, Buddy’s here to stay and if he’s done so in the past, far be it from me to understand it, I hope he makes your holidays happier. We could use some Christmas cheer this year, from any source we may derive it.
Support me on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/JordanBosch
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Jordan_D_Bosch
Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/jbosch/
Comments
Post a Comment