What a breath of fresh air this movie is watched in the same day as The Polar Express. It kind of proves all the points I made in my Polar Express review about why it was totally unnecessary to have it animated. There’s more love in Elf by far over any moment (even the great moments) in Polar Express.

This is Will Ferrell’s best movie to date. He expresses the childlike innocence absolutely required by his character perfectly. Zooey Deschanel is the perfect romance for him – I love how you get to catch a glimmer of her instant attraction to his energy right in their first scene together.

The score is perfect, and tiny touches in the production design absolutely kill me. In the last ten minutes, I kept remembering the ending (I’ve only seen it once before, around the time of its original release) and nearly prematurely bursting into tears because it’s so damn beautiful when Zooey starts to sing, when the people watching their TVs start to believe, etc. In one shot, you catch one of the most perfect representations of faith I’ve ever seen – James Caan starts singing, and in a flawless visual effect, the sleigh flies on over his head.

One of the best Christmas movies of all time.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 5th, 2004 at 8:24 pm in Movie Reviews, unrated and tagged as Christmas, comedy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.