The 2014 Partial Education Christmas Splurge

The 2014 Partial Education Christmas Splurge

Featuring Partially Educated Reviews of

The Grinch

Elf

The Polar Express

Fred Claus

A Christmas Carol

and Arthur Christmas

In case Tesco's insistence of starting Christmas sometime in September has managed to blur all conscious acceptance of when it actually does start, allow me to clarify. It's in two days and with that comes my annual quest to find a Christmas film that doesn't make me sit there feeling as though my time would be better spent watching The Muppet Christmas Carol again. This year, I actually went for films which have been recommended, either through friends, family, complete strangers or a popular critical response. I've stuck to films released released within the 21st century, because surely the 15 years we have had should have been enough time to produce a great Christmas film. Not sure how confident I am in that last statement.

I remember seeing about 10 minutes of The Grinch not long after it first came out and found it to be intensely annoying. The natural response to this was to just never bother watching it all the way through, but 14 years have passed since that time and I've become bored of everyone telling me I had to watch it. So I did. Happily, I can say that it's not quite as irritating as I remember it being. A lot of it hinges on your tolerance levels for Jim Carrey, playing the titular character whose inbuilt hatred of Christmas leads him to steal the festive season from the town of Whoville. Carrey embraces the role with all the madness and gurning that has come to be expected from him, but the character does show itself as a good fit for him. The flip side of this means that if you haven't liked him in other films, nothing will change your mind here. On a personal level, I'm fine with Carrey at his best, but hate him at his worst and he's treading the line between here, creating some genuinely funny moments, but sometimes interspersing these with some slight glimpses of over-confidence in his own madcap genius. The one thing that he often manages to do though is overshadow everyone else. This is particularly applicable here. Not a lot of time is given to the other characters, with Jeffrey Tambor getting the best deal of the stick as the film's truest villain. A young Taylor Momsen also gets time as the young girl that wants to bring the Grinch back into society, but that's not really a good thing as they're far too focussed on going for the cute factor. The film's one major song also dies on it's arse, as Momsen's hideously whiny voice breaks through. If you hate her new job in The Pretty Reckless, this film will make you realise that that band could be a whole lot worse. On a visual side, the film works much better, still impressing 14 years later and thus proving that it's three Oscars for Makeup, Art Direction and Costume were very well-earned. It's still a shame though that director Ron Howard appears far too enamoured with Carrey to fine-tune the other areas where the film is greatly lacking. Each year, a number of Christmas films make their way into cinemas and I guarantee that every year will hold one worse that The Grinch, but I do feel that the 14 years of recommendations have oversold it a bit.

THREE out of five

Jon Favreau's career as a director kept going from strength to strength until he hit the unfortunate stumbling block of Cowboys And Aliens. Along the way though, the man hasn't half made some gambles. Casting a still untrusted Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man was one those, but I'd say that Elf was a bigger one. It's not just that his second film would enter the festive market that's so hard to break through, but casting Will Ferrell in the lead was nowhere near as confident a decision as it is today. At this point, Ferrell's only lead roles had been as a co-star and one of those had been the awful A Night At The Roxbury. Old School had made him popular, but there was absolutely nothing that could hint that this man would be capable of selling a film on his star and his star alone. Elf changed that and, if nothing else, the makers deserve some respect for taking the gamble that paid off. Ferrell plays Buddy the Elf, who has been raised by one of Santa's elves after accidentally ending up there as a child. Not the brightest spark in the bunch, Buddy is well into his 30's before he realises he's actually a human. Upon learning this, he goes off in search of his birth father (James Caan). The bad news is that his Dad is a publisher whose every action pushes him further up the naughty list. The best moments lie in the interplay between Caan and Ferrell. Caan, in particular, seems game for a laugh, holding both a respect for the material and the work, instead of just seeming like he's cashing in a cheque. This may be a Ferrell vehicle, but it at least feels as though it's trying to create some decent supporting characters. It doesn't always work, as the love interest story with Zooey Deschanel feels hackneyed and unnecessary. It also needs to be said that Elf is fairly hit and miss when it comes to laugh out loud moments. It holds enough though to make it an enjoyable watch and I was perfectly amenable when it came to me having to indulge in a second viewing.

THREE out of five

Particularly in the family market, whether or not you enjoy a Christmas film or not hinges on how you feel about the occasion in general. If you hate it, you're going to be far less open to what you're about to see. This is none more true than it is with The Polar Express, a film which loves Christmas every bit as much as the children that it is primarily aiming to please. Fortunately for me, I've always managed to retain some of that childhood love of this time of year and so I'm more than happy to go with it when it comes to this film. A young boy has seen the facts and he's voting no. Adamant that a period of his childhood has come to an end, our nameless hero no longer believes in the existence of Santa Claus. Then Christmas Eve arrives and with it the Polar Express stops at his doorway, ready to take him and various other children to the North Pole. Yes, apparently Santa has begun a b-line career in kidnapping. The journey that follows is festive fun of the highest order with plenty of adventure, but also plenty of lessons that will naturally feel heavy-handed to an adult audience, but are going to work brilliantly with children. With Hans Zimmer's beautiful score and excellent voice acting from Tom Hanks, taking on most of the roles in the film, Robert Zemeckis has crafted a brilliant film that perfectly captures the appropriate mood. Unfortunately, he made it with motion capture. This is the first of three films that Zemeckis made using the technique and though the technical prowess is impressive, it doesn't make up for the fact that this film would be so much better in live action. This shows up most in the look of the characters, particularly their faces which look distractingly vacant unless breaking out into a beaming smile or an extreme frown. The technology has progressed since, but there were already films with better animation out there, begging the question why we needed to regress in quality. Yes, you can throw out the technological development argument, but that development has to be necessary and I question whether it ever was. From a film fan perspective, it's too irksome to give this a perfect score. If you're able to ignore issues such as these, then feel free to add an extra point to that score and also accept my jealousy. This goes for kid's too. Let's be honest. They're not going to care about the technical side, particularly if they get as swept up in the journey as the film wants them to.

FOUR out of five

If you're releasing a Christmas film, you have to be prepared for revulsion from critics and be ready to not care about it. That's not a dig in any particular direction, as most Christmas films deserve that hatred, but every so often one of those films receives the fury and wrath of every critic out there, but still seems to resonate with the money-paying filmgoers. From where I'm standing, Fred Claus appears to be one of those films. Vince Vaughn plays the older brother of his much more famous sibling, cursed to immortality as a result of his brother's sainthood, but forever having to live in the shadow of the global adoration that Santa (Paul Giamatti) receives. The solution is simple: he has absolutely nothing to do with his brother and works as a repo man. Through an entirely convenient series of events, Fred winds up in need of money and his brother gives it to him, on the condition that he comes work for him. Yes, apparently Santa is stupid enough to employ his Christmas hating younger brother, despite the fact that he's currently being audited by Kevin Spacey in a funereal suit. Where I stand on Fred Claus is pretty simple: I'm with the general public, but a little less enthusiastically. I simply don't get where the lashings of hatred have come from when the film is simple, harmless fun. The story is sweet enough and the spirit of Christmas stands strong, as it should do in a film of this nature. It may be a bit of a mess narratively and Vince Vaughn judders from horrible one minute to likeable the next with no real development in between, but does it honestly matter? The only thing that is a real problem is the film's seeming pre-occupation with presents as the meaning of Christmas. It tries to mask it with a noble "there's no such thing as bad kids" argument, but this still leads to the commercially inclined idea that the one thing kids need is presents. That's it for a sticking point that holds though and Fred Claus exists in perfectly acceptable form. That's not damning with faint praise, that's positivity without a need to cite revolution.

THREE out of five

The Polar Express was the start of Zemeckis' dabblings in motion capture and A Christmas Carol is, to date, the last (though I doubt it's the last we'll see of it). The major difference is that The Polar Express is a great film that I wanted to see in live action form rather than the existing one. A Christmas Carol is a film that I didn't enjoy in motion capture, but also wouldn't really care to see in live action. You know you're off to a bad start when you're managing to make the words of Charles Dickens sound boring and maybe my love of that film with Muppets in it means my expectations were unreasonably high, but this version of the classic story is flat-out dull. Much like Tom Hanks in The Polar Express, Jim Carrey dominates proceedings in the roles of Scrooge and all three ghosts, while the rest of the cast is fleshed out with the reliable likes of Colin Firth, Gary Oldman and Bob Hoskins. Carrey goes for the cartoonish side of things (shocking, I know), but lights up the film as much as he can while the rest of the cast run through the motions like they're delivering a half-asleep Jackanory reading. The 3D is as gimmicky as it usually is, but almost insultingly so, as I don't remember reading the original story and thinking "this would be even better if it looked like a snowball was headed towards my face". Worse still, it's not done a way which translates over to 2D. The Ghost of Christmas Present sequences particularly feel unwatchable as the effect created by 3D just looks weird and ineffective when returning to a 2D viewing. If you're making a 3D film, you have to accept that many people don't have access to that in the home viewing market and make sure they aren't penalised for that. So there, the impossible has been achieved in rendering Dickens ineffective. It's not that there's no glimmers of hope: the score is at times uplifting, the realisation of Dickensian London impressive on the visual front and, you know what, there's always going to be something about this story that manages to engage. That's not really good enough though.

TWO out of five

It feels as though Aardman must have been responsible for a plethora of films that could rival Pixar, but in reality, they haven't; Arthur Christmas only being their fourth one. Amongst that, they've had disappointment in the pretty dull Flushed Away, so their reputation is not enough to guarantee greatness. Arthur Christmas demonstrates this to be the case by taking a great idea, but making it a little bland. The focus is on showing how Santa manages to deliver presents to every child in the world over the course of one night. Here, Santa is a title passed down from generation to generation, with the position currently held by the ageing Malcolm (Jim Broadbent). His eldest son, Steve (Hugh Laurie) is what holds the operation together, with his ultra-tight management feeling deeply corporate. Meanwhile, the younger son Arthur (James McAvoy) is seen as scatty, clumsy and slightly annoying, but at least holds "the magic of Christmas within his heart". I don't know if that line is in there, but it might as well be with how bluntly this film reinforces it's point. This Christmas though, all is not well, as a present is missed and a child is set to wake up to an empty stocking. Viewed by Steve and Malcolm as collateral damage, this is not acceptable to Arthur and he and his grandfather steal a sleigh in order to get that present to the child. I said Arthur Christmas was bland and I meant it, but that's not to say it's bad. It's got enough laughs to pull you through and the great concept also helps. The animation is also solid, but not up there with the absolute apex we have become accustomed to. It flows along nicely enough and comes to a predictable, but solid conclusion. Additionally, the voice acting is brilliantly casted, with each actor bringing exactly what you should expect from them in their roles. Everything feels reliable enough, but nothing goes beyond that. If, on Christmas Eve, your kids are getting restless and excitable and all you want is something that'll keep them entertained, I'm moderately confident that this will do the job. On that basis, I'd say it's good enough.

THREE out of five

So, that's it for the 2014 splurge. My conclusion is a simple one: you really can't beat The Muppet Christmas Carol.

Next Time (5th January)

The Mandatory Review