'Elf': Its big-hearted charm is a one-size-fits-all gift

Friday, November 7, 2003

By SEAN AXMAKER
SPECIAL TO THE POST-INTELLIGENCER

Forget storybook land. Buddy (an endearingly childlike Will Ferrell), a human orphan raised as an elf in Santa's workshop, grows up in the land of Rankin-Bass Christmas TV specials. Candy cane trees, gingerbread houses and an animated talking snowman (the voice of Leon Redbone filling in for Burl Ives) are this boy's life.

MOVIE REVIEW

ELF

DIRECTOR: Jon Favreau

CAST: Will Ferrell, James Caan,

Zooey Deschanel, Bob Newhart, Ed Asner

RUNNING TIME: 98 minutes

RATING: PG for some mild rude humor and language

WHERE: Alderwood 7, Cinema 17, Crossroads 8, Factoria, Gateway 8, Issaquah 9, Kirkland Parkplace, Lewis & Clark, Marysville Cinema 14, Meridian 16, Metro, Monroe 12, Mountlake 9, Redmond Town Center, Renton Village, South Hill Mall, Woodinville 12

GRADE: B

The eager, excitable innocent is an ungainly giant in a land of happy smiling little people, a lone tenor in a choir of squeaky sopranos, and not exactly the sharpest tool in the workshop. It takes a heart-to-heart from his adoptive Papa Elf (a diminutive, deadpan Bob Newhart) for the obvious to sink in: Buddy isn't in fact big for his age, he's just not an elf.

His odyssey to find his biological father, a cynical publisher (James Caan) on Santa's naughty list, takes him out of the land of sugar plum diets and into the bustling streets of New York City.

It turns out that a grown man in yellow tights and a green woodsman's cap isn't all that out of place in the Big Apple, but his constant outpouring of childlike naivete and unbridled enthusiasm is.

Director Jon Favreau makes up for lack of comic grace with giddy, good-natured humor and resists the temptation to turn his naif into the butt of endless jokes. He never lets Buddy play the victim and refuses to stoop to rude, scatological humor. With the untiring comic energy of "Saturday Night Live" alumnus Ferrell driving the film, he doesn't need to.

Ferrell, in his first leading role, peppers every scene with manic outbursts and joyous exclamations and springs his creatively misguided celebrations of happiness with such a sincere desire to please you can't help but share his sense of wonder.

Buddy teaches the urban hard cases the true meaning of Christmas, saves Santa (Ed Asner) from the Four Central Park Cops of the Apocalypse, and turns the Etch-a-Sketch into a low-tech word processor.

But the real gift of "Elf" is the simple pleasure of a sweet and funny comedy that genuinely embraces its message of holiday cheer and still has fun goofing with it.