Elf; Buddy's Spaghetti

You sit on a throne of lies

Elf (2003)

Director: Jon Favreau

Had I seen this before: Sure have

Did I recognize the “famous quote” in the ad: Yes

From around 1992 to 2003, I operated under the assumption that the Christmas movies on my rewatch list had been more or less set. The Muppet Christmas Carol arrived in December of 1992 when I was 12 years old, getting in right under the wire in terms of my enthusiasm for new children’s movies, and for many years occupied the parking spot in my brain labeled “the last holiday movie I will ever care about.” The next year I slept on The Nightmare Before Christmas. Two years later I had no interest in examining the fine print of The Santa Clause (although it is my understanding that an entire generation just below me discovered David Krumholtz this way, which means it is not without value). By age 16 I was happy to let Arnie Jingle All the Way to wherever he was headed without me. As a junior in college I couldn’t imagine anything less necessary than a live-action Grinch movie. To this day I don’t know what to make of Love Actually, a film that has so many problems it would require an entire series of posts, each dedicated to a different subplot, in order to grapple with them all. But then, when I was a baby adult in 2003, the guy from PCU and Swingers made a Christmas movie that lovingly referenced so many of the holiday classics that I did care about, he had me at Bob Newhart saying “Oh, hello.”

(Lest you think this led to a whole new wave of me embracing contemporary Christmas entertainment, Robert Zemeckis unleashed the first holiday film to take place entirely within the Uncanny Valley the next year and the dead-eyed Tom Hanks therein effectively put an end to my open-mindedness on that front.)

But: Elf. Elf snuck through. It’s not perfect—most notably I think you can feel the tonal tug-of-war between Will Ferrell and Adam McKay’s desire for a more PG-13 straight comedy and Jon Favreau’s vision of a warm-hearted holiday staple, plus some elements just don’t make very much sense, such as Zooey Deschanel being blonde—but it is genuinely funny and colorful, both referential and inventive, and probably the sweetest movie to ever feature Sonny Corleone. (Since he appears in one flashback scene in Part II, I believe this makes the late great James Caan the second actor to star in two of the films on this list, along with Ferrell. Way to go, Jimmy!)

Elf is the story of Buddy (Will Ferrell), a human who is raised in the North Pole by Papa Elf (Bob Newhart) after he inadvertently stows away in Santa’s toy sack as a baby, escaping the orphanage where he had been left after his mother’s death. (One issue left unaddressed is that the sweet nun who puts baby Buddy to bed on Christmas Eve presumably discovered an empty crib the next morning and spent the rest of her life tormented by the memory of the child who went missing while under her care.) Although Santa (Ed Asner) and the other elves are generally supportive of Buddy, it becomes increasingly obvious as he grows that he doesn’t fit in with his fellow elves. Not only is he three times the size of everyone else, he struggles to fill any of his toy-making quotas with his clumsy human hands. One of the most successful elements of this film is its use of in-camera effects, such as forced perspective in all the North Pole sequences, which mostly lets it avoid any distracting or potentially traumatizing CGI. Buddy is much bigger than everyone else in a sort of funhouse way. This fits in with the use of Rankin/Bass-style stop-motion in the opening scenes and makes everything feel pleasantly tactile. (Two of the other most successful elements are Bob Newhart and Ed Asner.)

When Buddy discovers his actual origins—and that his father Walter (James Caan), who does not know he exists, is still alive and living in New York City—he embarks on a journey to reunite with his human family. From here, most of the film is a fish-out-of-water comedy about someone raised in Santa’s workshop trying to navigate 21st century Manhattan. Antics obviously abound. Buddy finds and is quickly rejected by Walter, a Scrooge-like publishing executive who prioritizes the bottom line over any and all humanity. He wanders into a department store and is swept into semi-employment based on his attire until a confrontation with a fake Santa results in a restraining order. While there, he meets and is immediately enamored of Jovie (Zooey Deschanel), an elf-costumed employee who seems to have a lack of Christmas spirit and some trouble paying her bills and also possibly clinical depression.

When a DNA test confirms Buddy’s relationship to Walter, he brings him home to his wife Emily (Mary Steenburgen) and son Michael (Daniel Tay). I have already discussed the fact that the presence of Mary Steenburgen on screen is like a mug of extra-strength camomile tea for me, and especially so in this movie, as her version of Emily is so unbelievably calm and welcoming of Buddy despite the fact that he is a 30-year-old love child of her husband’s who insists he is an elf (culturally speaking) and upends their home and caloric intake in his effort to spread cheer. (The women in this movie seem to have an easier time taking Buddy in stride than the men, on average—Walter’s underpaid secretary (Amy Sedaris) seems charmed by him throughout, and Jovie not only resists filling a workplace harassment suit after their first couple of encounters, but eventually falls for him.) I guess if Emily can put up with being married to Walter, it makes sense that she can feel empathy for Buddy, but if someone chopped up my furniture to make a rocking horse and then handed me a Ziploc bag full of maple spaghetti I’m not sure how graciously I would receive them, personally.

Of course Buddy eventually wins everyone over—I was a little surprised that my 14-year-old seemed scandalized by the relatively chaste peck on the lips between Jovie and Buddy “on their first date!” but I guess the “Gen Z doesn’t want sex in movies” discourse might be on to something. And he also saves Christmas, as one must do in these situations. This movie directly references or is clearly influenced by so many other films, not all of them holiday-themed—Favreau has specifically noted the impact of Penny Marshall’s Big, a personal problematic fave about a childlike mind in a grown man’s body who must make it on his own in NYC. There is a shot of Buddy on a crowded New York sidewalk in a clear homage to Tootsie. The Central Park Rangers are styled and shot like ringwraiths from The Fellowship of the Ring. And of course the ties to other Christmas movies are everywhere: A Christmas Story (Ming Ming the elf is played by star Peter Billingsley), It’s a Wonderful Life (looking out from a snowy bridge in a moment of despair), National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (stuffing an oversized tree into a living room, the surprise attack from a raccoon/squirrel gag), A Christmas Carol (Walter’s miserliness and poor treatment of his employee), and a soupçon of Miracle on 34th Street (big city department store Santas).

But the real template for this film, and likely the reason that it captured my heart, is the phenomenally weird 1964 Rankin/Bass television special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. If you grew up with this one but haven’t seen it in a while, I suggest you check it out this season—I have watched it almost every year of my life and every single year I think “I forgot how strange this movie is.” (In a good way! Yukon Cornelius forever!) From the stop-motion singing snowman to the costuming and furnishing at the North Pole to Buddy’s reaction to his crush being reciprocated to his eventual pivotal role in helping Santa’s sleigh get to where it needs to be, the Rudolph DNA is apparent throughout. For me, to this day, they are a perfect double-feature; a way to trace cinematic Christmastime history, and witness firsthand how Rudolph flew so that Buddy could spin nauseously around a revolving door.

The Regal Ad

The outfit: This teal sweater over the Peter Pan-collared shirt is actually a real achievement in evoking an elf outfit without a hat or pointy ears. Why did they try so hard on some of these and not at all on others? A+

The line: Buddy hisses this at the department store Santa when he realizes he is a fraud. Apparently Favreau got this line from Lord of the Rings, making this the second time that the “famous movie line” was actually quoting something else. But it is probably funnier when Will Ferrell says it. B

The context: This woman is an onlooker in the Danny Trejo/possibly Fredo dispute regarding his missing Pepsi, and indicates that the young man sitting on the other side of Trejo is in fact the soda thief. Should be noted that in the film, Santa is sitting on an actual throne-like seat, and this guy is just sitting in the theater like everyone else, so it’s exceedingly peculiar phrasing but I guess it gets the point across. C+

Spaghetti with…toppings from The Mind of Buddy the Elf

All I will say about this dish is that someone in my household who is not me consumed the entire thing. I will be withholding their name out of respect for their dietary privacy at this time. Also: crumbling a Pop Tart on top of almost anything feels like a real power move.

Up next: “This is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.” And the end of my relationship with this infernal ad!