the times | Saturday December 4 2021 saturday review 5
behind Coraline, this is Christmas at its
creepiest. Our unseasonal hero is Jack
Skellington, the skeletal king of Hallo-
ween Town, who slowly discovers the
delights of neighbouring Christmas Town.
Amazon, Apple, Disney+, Google, Sky- Love Actually (2003)
Ooh, controversial. Yet for every person
who retches when Liam Neeson tells his
son to “kick the shit out of love”, another
swoons at how Emma Thompson’s cheat-
ed-on mum puts on a brave face for her
kids. Amazon, Apple, Google, Netflix, Sky - The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)
Many have tackled Dickens’s perennial
tale, but how can you compete with this
casting? Gonzo as the narrating Dick-
ens, Kermit as Bob Cratchit, Miss
Piggy as Mrs Cratchit, Statler and
Waldorf as Jacob Marley and his
brother Robert. Oh, and Mich-
ael Caine as Scrooge. Amazon,
Apple, Disney+, Google, Sky
11. Bad Santa (2003)
If you thought Ebenezer
Scrooge was the ultimate
humbugger you haven’t met
Billy Bob Thornton’s alcoholic,
kid-hating, drink-driving sex ad-
dict, who uses his cover as a depart-
ment-store Santa to rob shopping
malls with his dwarf sidekick. Cockle-
warming stuff. Amazon, Apple, Google, Sky - White Christmas (1954)
This is quality corn from Michael Curtiz,
the director of Casablanca. Again, there’s a
wartime theme, with Bing Crosby’s former
Broadway star singing for the troops on
Christmas Eve, 1944. Irving Berlin wrote
the songs, including the Oscar-nominated
Count Your Blessings. Amazon, Apple,
Google, Sky
Ed Potton
Schmaltz alert! 12 best Christmas films
- Elf (2003)
Jon Favreau’s comedy has grown and
grown to the point where its all-consum-
ing festive power cannot be denied. At the
heart of its appeal is a balance between sil-
liness and schmaltz and, of course, Will
Ferrell. His man-child slapstick finds its
perfect vehicle in Buddy the outsized elf,
whether he is popping other people’s used
chewing gum into his mouth or pressing
every button on a lift in the Empire State
Building. Amazon, Apple, Google, Sky - Home Alone (1990)
Because nothing says Christmas like an
eight-year-old sadist ingeniously maiming
a pair of grown men. Yet the fact that
Macaulay Culkin’s Kevin has been aban-
doned over the festive period is important.
The sting of being left on one’s tod at a time
of togetherness powers the movie, even if
Kevin is having a whale of a time for most
of it. Amazon, Apple, Disney+, Google, Sky - Trading Places (1983)
Another film where Christmas is in the
background, but still crucial to the mood.
The contrasting fortunes of Eddie Mur-
phy’s resourceful beggar and Dan Ayk-
royd’s supercilious stockbroker are shot
through with Dickensian morality. It’s
funny too. Amazon, Apple, Google, Sky - It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)
Frank Capra’s classic is as much a part of
the season’s furniture as crackers and glut-
tony, which is surprising in a way because
most of it is anything but comforting. Poor
Jimmy Stewart has to wade through a
riverload of misery before he reaches the
life-affirming payoff. Boy, is it worth it,
though — it’s like a snowy Shawshank
Redemption. Amazon, Apple, Google, Sky - The Snowman (1982)
The David Bowie intro, the swirling pastel
animation, Howard Blake’s spare score,
the transcendent rendition of Walking in
the Air by Aled... sorry, Peter Auty. It’s
only 26 minutes long, but Jimmy T Mura-
kami and Dianne Jackson’s adaptation of
Raymond Briggs’s book is exquisite.
Amazon, Apple, Google, Sky - Carol (2015)
What do you mean it’s not a Christmas
film? It’s set during the holiday
season of 1952 in super-festive New
York and it’s called Carol, for heav-
en’s sake. Sure, there’s an under-
tow of sadness in the love affair
between Cate Blanchett’s Carol
and Rooney Mara’s Therese, but
plenty of Christmases have that,
too. Amazon, Apple, Google, Sky - Last Christmas (2019)
Yes, lots of people saw the twist com-
ing a furlong off, but it was a stroke of
genius to build a rom-com around the
music of George Michael, which drips with
the kind of bittersweet yearning that
works brilliantly at Christmas. Plus, Emilia
Clarke is far more convincing as a dorky
romantic heroine than she was as a mother
of dragons, and here is a rare cinematic
London that features non-white people.
Amazon, Apple, Google, Netflix, Sky - The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)
Conceived by Tim Burton, the maestro of
mainstream gothic, and directed by Henry
Selick, the stop-motion animation guru
S
o let’s deal with the one problem —
the Elfephant in the room, if you
will — with the otherwise perfect
Elf: Will Ferrell (then 36) plays
opposite his romantic lead, Zooey
Deschanel (23), and it will never not look
a bit weird; not least because Deschanel is
shot in such soft-focus she looks like a
three-year-old cloud with eyes in it, while
Ferrell is not shot in soft focus and looks
47-and-a-half.
If you’re watching Elf with Gen Z teen-
agers who haven’t seen it before, then
HUMANITY HAS ABSOLUTELY FAIL-
ED AT ONE OF ITS SIMPLEST AND
MOST IMPORTANT TASKS, because: it
is, simply, the most perfect Christmas
movie ever made.
It’s a Wonderful Life is too long, The
Snowman is too sad (“And tomorrow, he
built another snowman, kids! Don’t cry!
Oh, God!”) and Die Hard isn’t a Christmas
movie: it’s an action movie with a Christ-
mas tree in it.
Elf is the epitome of “make a movie like
no one’s watching”: in Hollywood at the
time of shooting, everyone thought it was
a mad folly. When location shots of Will
Ferrell, wandering around New York in his
elf costume, made the press, it was pre-
sumed that his post-Saturday Night Live
career was over. The whole project was
seen as demented. Who casts an edgy
comedian as an innocent, sugar-guzzling,
wonder-struck elf?
But that’s why Elf works, because at
Christmas we’re all edgy comedians taking
time off to be sugar-guzzling, wonder-
struck elves. If you’re doing Christmas
right, you should become so gleeful and
silly you get stuck in a revolving shop door
or fill a room with paper snowflakes; or
pour syrup on spaghetti; or punch a fake
Santa (“You sit on a THRONE of LIES!”).
Will Ferrell’s Buddy is the spirit of every
city on Christmas Eve — otherwise
sensible people standing outside pubs,
pissed, in silly hats, singing loud, with good
cheer, for all to hear. Elf’s script suspends
all the rules of 21st-century film-making.
Who the hell starts a film in an adorable
North Pole, then segues into an animated
sequence (“Goodbye, Mr Narwhal!”),
before landing in modern-day New
York? But as Christmas is all about
suspending the rules, that’s why it strikes
the perfect chord.
Obviously, Ferrell turns in one of the
all-time great semi-improvised comedy
leads, up there with Bill Murray in Ghost-
busters, with the same sense of it all
teetering out of control. I find it difficult to
believe you haven’t wanted to burst into a
coffee shop shouting, “You did it! Congrat-
ulations! World’s best cup of coffee!
Congratulations everybody!” or say,
mournfully, “I’m a cotton-headed ninny-
muggins,” or text someone, “Good news! I
saw a dog today!” or explain, “I just like to
smile. Smiling’s my favourite.”
I’ve lost count of the meetings I’ve walk-
ed into that have prompted me to say:
“This looks like Santa’s workshop — ex-
cept it smells like mushrooms, and every-
one looks like they want to hurt me.” And
humanity has yet to come up with a better
expression of giddy love than Ferrell’s
improvised “I love you, I love you, I LOVE
YOU!” song to his Christmas-cheer-need-
ing father, James Caan.
Really, I’ve kind of wasted these words
saying anything else: all I really want to say
to Elf — on behalf of the grateful millions
who will be watching it this Christmas — is
that. I love you, I love you, I LOVE YOU!I Elf
Caitlin Moran
y
tale, but how
casting?G
ens, Ke
Piggy
Wald
bro
ael
Ap111
If
Sc
hhu
BBilly
kkkkid-h
ddddict, w
mmment-sto
mmmmalls with
warming stuff12 WhiteChstmas
day
wm-
ke of
nd the
rips with
ng that
s, Emilia
a dorkysanta’s helper Will
Ferrell in Elf. Below:
Andrew Lincoln and
Keira Knightley in
Love ActuallyI
feel a fraud calling Love Actually a
Christmas film, although it is, because
I’ll watch it, or bits of it, at any time of
year. I’ve probably seen it seven times,
adding up the many late-night 30-
minute segments I’ve come across while
channel-surfing and sworn I wouldn’t
watch and suddenly it’s 1am. It’s one of
those films where what the critics see as
weaknesses — sentimental, mawkish,
impossibly attractive cast, overlong — the
rest of us see as strengths. I’m reminded of
a high-minded chap I met in the summer
just before the Euros final who told me he
didn’t watch football because it’s all about
“tribalism and nationalism”. I thought:
“Well, d’oh. What’s your point, mate?”
I’m an absolute sucker for rom-coms
anyway, and in the genre the Richard
Curtis-Hugh Grant combo is hard to beat.
My wife can only do so much schmaltz, but
my enjoyment of superbly crafted cheese
is more or less limitless. It’s not that my
wife is cold-hearted, more that I’m emo-
tionally incontinent and easily moved. My
favourite scene in Love Actually isn’t the
prime minister dancing to the Pointer
Sisters, or Colin Firth’s love declaration in
execrable Portuguese, or the singing body-
guard, or even Bill Nighy’s rock legend
tour de force, it’s the very end where the
screen divides and we see all those tearful,
cheerful greetings of ordinary people at
Heathrow. I always cry.
And anyway, it’s not all froth. The
soundtrack is great, Grant is impeccable,
as is Curtis’s script (“Sorry about all the
cock-ups, my cabinet are absolute crap”)
and Emma Thompson as the wronged
wife, stoical yet shattered, is stunningly
good. I’d be amazed if the next month
passes without an eighth viewing.I Love Actually
Robert Crampton