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Elf Movie Review

Elf is a 2003 Christmas comedy movie directed by Jon Favreau and starring Will Ferrell. This is a solid, but very childish flick.

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“You sit on a throne of lies!“

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It is about Buddy, a human adopted and raised by elves. One day he sets to NYC to meet his biological father and a whole world of cynics. It’s your standard helping the cynics to see the magic storyline that has been done to death by now. It’s sweet and charming for sure, but certainly not very original nor exciting.

The movie is solid and quite fun in some scenes. The highlight for me was the scene with Peter Dinklage in a very early role for him. That was a hilarious scene. There were some other less funny, but solidly amusing moments throughout, but overall the movie is far from hilarious.

The childishness runs rampant here. It unfortunately reminded me of all of those nineties movies that I have watched as a kid on TV. Thus, it felt quite dated to me and for an adult person, it’s undoubtedly not as charming nor as fun as I guess it would be for kids. The third act is particularly corny, but again for kids it must be great.

Elf is famous for the performance of Will Ferrell. Although I personally find his performance here a bit too lauded, it is still one of his most memorable, strong works. Let’s face it, Ferrell has always been a man-child, thus he fits this role like a glove. His facial expressions, especially those of wide-eyed wonder made the movie endearing.

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James Caan was also very well cast in the father role and the relationship between the two is easily the movie’s highlight. But I also really liked Zooey Deschanel as the girlfriend-type character. I always forget that she was born in the eighties and it was crazy seeing her in such an early 2000s movie, but she’s quite memorable. Elf is well scored and shot, but the pacing isn’t the greatest and the dialogue is too childish as is the humor at times.

Elf is a lauded Christmas movie, but I personally did not find it to be all that great. Will Ferrell was a perfect fit for the main man-child role and others were also well cast. The movie is sweet and charming, but way too childish in tone and humor without much appeal for adults. It unpleasantly reminded me of all those kids movies from the nineties.

My Rating – 3.5