Stream it now Elf Reset Status Want to Watch Already Watched Don't Want to Watch

it was funny and fun to watch

I love this movie it is so funny that I had to rewatch it.

great movie watches every year around Christmas and even on Christmas it's great holiday & family movie

THIS MOVIE MIGHT GO TO BEING A CLASSIC HOLIDAY MOVIE.WILL DID GREAT AS THE ELF BUDDY.ANYONE HUNGRY FOR COTTON BALLS OR SYRUP AND SPAGHETTI.NO KIDDING ASIDE.THIS IS AN ENJOYABLE FILM.

Elf was all pure fun and got me in the Christmas mood.. It was hilarious and there was not a minute you werent laughing.. The funny part was that there was this scence that Will Ferrell (Buddy) and some other girl kiss and this little kid sitting behind us was like ewww I hate kissing and his dad was like yea I dont like kissing either.. lol.. yea i thought that was funny.. so this friday wasnt as boring... what a cute movie..

Pat and Elisa and I saw Elf tonight... it is really good. Definitely a family movie, definitely not raunchy like Old School or anything, just a lot of good clean wholesome fun. (as Ferrell's elf is basically the most idealistic christmas elf in the universe, and then he's thrown into the 'real world'...)

Definitely going to be a modern christmas classic, along the lines of 'A Christmas Story' and (dare I say it) 'Jingle All the Way'!!!!

Its better if you haven't seen the trailer a million times like I did, as thats a lot of the funny bits (physical bits at least), that would be maybe the one drawback I would say...

I gave a seminar in the FANUC room today, it went pretty well. I took some pictures, I'll load them up when I get home (I'm in the lab at 12:30am!)

See below entry for more. I'm iritated you can't rate two movies in one entry. RT needs to fix this.

Will Ferrell is probably the first real major talent to come out of Saturday Night Live in quite a long time. Others have tried and pretty much failed with Mike Myers being pretty much the last one to really succeed (and even his time seems to have come and gone). Will Ferrell hit paydirt earlier this year with a funny supporting role in Old School. In Elf, Ferrell has the lead and any future possibilities of more roles for him based on this movie provides a definite...maybe.

Elf is the kind of movie that seems to deteriorate the more you think about it. There's several things to like about it, but the film seems half-baked and adds up to seemingly very little. I'm admittedly not one for holiday movies (the last I saw in theatres that I liked was National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation), but Elf does start out promising enough with Ferrell's human character Buddy being raised by Elves and Santa Claus among a surreal setting straight out of the stop-motion Christmas specials of decade's past.

For some reason, it takes Buddy quite awhile to figure out that he's different than anyone else and so he sets out to find his real father, played by James Caan who aptly portrays bewilderment at this grown man showing up in a costume proclaiming to be his son. Or is it that Caan is just embarrassed to be in this movie?

The rest of the film is Buddy trying to fit into the real world and finding that most people just aren't into believing in Santa Claus anymore. He falls in love with Jovie, a salesgirl played by Zooey Deschanel who isn't seen in her oddly alluring elf costumes nearly enough. She of course reciprocates those feelings almost immediately despite how in reality this girl would have been most likely terrified of this large creepy guy in an elf suit. Seeing as how the movie wanted to make contrasts between real life and Buddy's, one would think that they'd try to make the romantic component a bit more realistic. Perhaps I'm asking for too much with this?

Elf is an example of a movie that I don't particularly hate persay, but I just couldn't really find enough about it to like. Will Ferrell is pretty funny throughout the film, with numerous surreal scenes that cracked me up ("You sit on a throne of lies"). However, the film descends into one holiday cliche after another in the final twenty minutes or so as the characters try to Save Christmas: a television reporter telegraphing the plot, a person starting to sing with everyone else joining in etc. And during the climax of the film, Buddy really isn't present for much of it or else is not really integral to the plot, when the whole film had been about him.

There's also a question that has been slowly growing in my mind regarding Buddy's behavior. Sure, he's innocent and that's supposed to be his charm. Yet in the North Pole scenes, the elves act far more adult. They're full of Christmas cheer, but they also have quotas to fill and turbine jet engines to repair so I don't know where exactly Buddy was imitating his behavior from. It just doesn't seem to jive.

Elf might have been recommendable if perhaps the film had focused on a slightly more complex Buddy and avoided the usual ending. I was also thinking there'd be more subversive situations or behavior in the overly artificial North Pole scenes. As it is, much of the film's humor was shown in the trailer. However, Will Ferrell fans will probably like it.

**/****

Elf (2003)
Will Ferrell, James Caan, Zooey Deschanel
Directed by Jon Favreau
97 min (?)
Grade B (Fresh) (90)

Boasted by Ferrell's insane, and insanely strong performance, Elf is a sweet and delightful early Christmas treat; but like most treats it is forgettable, disposable and altogether "nutrient" free.

on a related note, I fine it strangely funny that "foggy Nelson" directed a movie,

Elf was cute. Not a blockbuster, but about as servicable as Tim Allen's The Santa Clause. The homages to Rankin Bass animation caused a couple of chuckles and overall the movie hit the notes it needed to before the closing credits.


As part of the getting ready for the home study, I installed Norton's Internet Security Package. It has a lot of neat features, including a spam blocker, ad pop-up blocker, firewall and intrusion detection. This last feature has caused me a bit of concerned as every hour I get a popup from it saying that it is blocking a SubSeven Trojan attack on my computer. I trace it back to some computer in London, but don't do much more than that. I've scanned the system several times and I'm not infected, but the messages are quite alarming. Either this software is great and I'm under constant attack or the software is making stuff up to justify its existence.


Who can tell...

Oh and it has parental controls. That means I can block porn ads and pop ups from everyone but me. :D