Review By Sean Crespo

View This Trailer

Now that Will Farrell has taken the reins as the main character in the film version of Elf, it is perhaps a little prophetic to note that in the book version (written by J.R.R. Tolkien as the epic conclusion to his Lord of the Rings trilogy), the main character's name is in High Elvish. In the Common Tongue of Middle Earth, of course, this translates roughly to Laugh-Bringer of Much Talent, Who Comes From The Mountains To Make Films Resembling Excrement.

As the final installment of such a classic story, Tolkien has really outdone himself with Elf, imagining the Elven world as only he, or possibly a functionally illiterate movie executive, could. The story takes off a few years after the end of Return of the King. The Elves have left Middle Earth to sail West to the Grey Havens, home of all the Eldar and their guardians, the Valinor. Unfortunately, all they find upon their return is a snowy wasteland filled with frolicking reindeer, electric lights on strings, and a hideously oversized felt-wearing evil known only as the Csantaclos, one of Sauron's apprentices from the elder days. The Csantaclos enslaves the newly arrived elves, and soon transforms Elrond's people through a strict regimen of candy-eating and forced regimens of skipping and giggling from a people filled with grace and other-worldly beauty into junior petites with an extreme case of seasonal affective disorder. They make toys until their fingers bleed, then credits.

Ah, but I kid. Our trailer actually opens with a baby Will Ferrell sneaking into Santa's toy bag -- falling into what I would have assumed was some manner of portal into a toy-filled oblivion where time. This strikes me as a waste of a potentially interesting premise. I suspect that Will Ferrell growing up alone in some dimensionless phantom world of Santa's toy bag, insanity deepening with every not-passing second, would have been a much more compelling movie than what looks to be a fairly rote fish-out-of-water story. Plus in my psychosis-inducing hellish pan-dimension script, Will Farrell could run into those infinite monkeys trying to crank out Shakespeare you always hear about.

Ferrell: Hey, Infinite Monkeys. How's the play coming?

Infinite Monkeys hand Ferrell a script.

Ferrell: (reading) "To be or not two bees." (looks up) Say! Getting warmer! Hey, could one of you guys scratch out my eyes? I just want to make sure I can still feel anything.

Alas, it was not to be. Instead, the infant Ferrell simply crawls back out of the sack. And what does Santa say when he sees this? Perhaps, "Ho ho ho, how did you get in there, little one?" Or maybe, "Ho ho ho, a human child! I shall raise it as my own!" Nope. He says, "What in the name of Sam Hill!"

Though it's not much of an epithet, it still seems to be a touch too salty for any Santa I'd want to believe in. Not only does it suggest Santa hangs out down at the docks excessively, it's an outdated colloquialism from the Old West, so it's not like it even makes any sense. Elf paints a not entirely welcome backstory for old St. Nick -- one where disputes were solved two-fistedly with handfuls of hot steel, loose women danced topless in gambling barges, and where reindeer were just as soon shot and gutted as a source of salted jerky as they would be trained to deliver toys. It's a little too much for my childhood to bear.

Besides, if my brief stint as an elemtary school teacher has taught me anything, it's that the natural reaction to a big surprise should be to go big or go home; there's no place for a half-swear. Something like "What the fuck?" or even "Jesus H. Christhole!" Otherwise you wind up spending the trailer distracted, wondering if Santa really wanted to get his curse on at all.

My point is, if we're going to traumatize my sensibilities anyway (see above) by getting Santa's vocabulary vastly, indelibly wrong, why not go the whole nine? Why not have him truly let it loose with a "Beelzebub's teat!" or a "Well, suck on Prancer's cock, what the shit's that?" Or, if you still want to maintain a little sweetness in the Clause character, maybe a "Holy rim-jobbing fuck-steeds! (long pause) Ho ho ho, can I get you a cookie?"

So anyway, cut to:

30 Years Later? Ferrell is one of them, one of Santa's elves, but being a human, he's a little different; and by different I mean retarded. Or, at least, this is what the trailer would imply. Possibly it's all that sugar and toy-making, they don't really spell it out. At any rate, we first see Ferrell as a grown human sitting in one of the tiny, tiny seats among the tiny, tiny Elf children in a tiny, tiny classroom, in what is probably the equivalent of 3rd grade Elf school. Really, it's just embarrassing. At that point, someone should have just given him an Elf G.E.D., or at the worst they could have given him a custodial job to make it worthwhile for the school to keep him around.

But wait! What about that chair tiny, tiny chair you mentioned he was in? "Surely such a tiny, tiny chair was never meant to hold such an un-tiny man?" you ask. Don't you worry. It's not in the trailer, but you are virtually guaranteed by the level of intelligence this movie asks of its audience that at some point in the film, Will Ferrell's chair will collapse while he is in it, with hilarious results ensuing. And if there is no God, as I've always suspected, later on Ferrell will slip on a tiny, tiny Elf banana peel and fall face first into a tiny, tiny Elf pie, at which point he will pause, break the fourth wall by mugging into the camera, then ask if there are going to be "seconds."

All this big-man-in-a-tiny-house business, while hilarious, doesn't actually get our plot moving along. And so after several more sneak-em-in-under-the-wire gags, Ferrell goes off in search of his birth parents, walking more or less randomly through thousands of miles of snowy tundra in no particular direction.

Fortunately, thanks to the suspension of disbelief (and caring!), it's okay that he just happens to stumble upon the largest, most exciting, "fish-out-of-water" metropolis in the whole world, New York City. I wonder what he will make of our big city ways? Will he teach us how to care again with his simple corn-fed honesty? Will he reunite with his parents? Will there be a bag next to my seat for vomiting before, during, and after the film? Who knows? That's the magic of the movies and that's why I love 'em.

So that's basically the trailer. The only question I feel goes unanswered is about the scene where Ferrell gets hit by a taxi cab but gets right back up again, evidently uncrushed to death. I'm not sure if he's supposed to be magically indestructible or if his character is supposed to be too stupid to feel pain. I wish I were too stupid to feel pain. I also wish I were too stupid to buy tickets in advance. Elf makes me sad. I love Ferrell and, like a needy lover, want to keep giving him second chances. The makers of the trailer couldn't possibly have known that (or if they did, way too micro-market!), but I suppose the trailer did its job to a reasonable degree. I give Elf 2 1/2 Billy Crystals. And that's me being generous, what with the holiday spirit and all. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go bake some tiny, tiny pies to fall into later.

A Merry Beelzebub's Teat to you all, and to all a good teat.

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