Ferrell shines in 'Elf'

By Nathan Hathaway

Will Ferrell hasn’t made a worthwhile movie since… well, OK, Will Ferrell has never made a worthwhile movie.

Until now.

Ferrell plays the main character, Buddy, in “Elf,” which hits theaters today.

Buddy is a human raised by elves after he crawled into Santa’s toy bag as a baby.

It never crosses his mind that he may not actually be an elf, even though he grows to at least twice the size of all the other elves in Santa’s workshop.

Buddy overhears some of the other elves talking about him and gets wise to the idea that maybe he’s not an elf. He decides to embark on a journey from the North Pole to New York City to find his real dad, who never even knew about him.

Buddy looks a little out of sorts in the big city. A place where people rush everywhere and don’t often worry about spreading cheer isn’t exactly the ideal atmosphere for an innocent elf who thinks the world is all snowflakes and sugarplums. The hustle and bustle just doesn’t suit him. And a 6-foot-3 man in an elf costume—complete with pointy hat, yellow tights and curly-toed shoes—gets a lot of funny looks in the big city.

Try as they might, no one in the big city can jade Buddy. He spreads true Christmas spirit everywhere he goes, sometimes to the chagrin of those around him.

When Buddy is mistaken for a hired elf in a department store, he exposes the hired Santa as a fake. Buddy even goes as far as telling a boy sitting on Santa’s lap not to tell Santa what he wants for Christmas. Then Buddy tells off the Santa before yanking off the guy’s fake beard.

Buddy knows the Santa is a fake because he knows the real Santa Claus, played well by Ed Asner.

It’s nice to see Ferrell in a role that’s funny all by itself. Playing Buddy doesn’t require a lot of the weak physical comedy—except when Buddy gets hit by a taxi cab—and uncouth humor Ferrell usually has to resort to in his movies. The premise of “Elf,” and Buddy’s innocence make it a movie suitable for all audiences and seriously funny at the same time. The raciest this movie gets is when Buddy tells Jovie (Zooey Deschanel), a girl whom he meets at the department store’s version of the North Pole, that his tongue swells up whenever he thinks about her.

The colors and lighting in “Elf” keep with the overall light and joyful theme. The movie takes place right around Christmas, so the North Pole and New York are both very snowy and thus very white. Even Buddy’s light green costume is easy on the eyes. The movie is only dark when it should be, like at night. It’s just an overall light movie, in more ways than one.

The music in the movie is also happy, for the most part. There’s a bit of suspenseful music near the end, but other than that, the entire soundtrack is upbeat, joyful tunes.

One of those wonders of cinematography employed in “Elf” is the ability to make certain characters—all the other elves, in this case—played by full-grown adults look like they stand about 3 feet tall. This is the same trick most recently seen in and made famous by the “Lord of the Rings” movies, where the hobbits are made to look much smaller than everyone else.

Finally, Will Ferrell, a comic genius waiting to happen, plays a part that lets him be funny without having to be sickening. He should be proud of hims-elf.