"You forgot your hug!"

I keep saying that I'm going to write up some reviews of my favourite Christmas films, and not getting round to it. So far, saying that I'm going to do something and not getting round to it is a rather impressively consistent theme to this blog. You're welcome.

So far this year, I haven't actually watched that many of my favourite Christmas movies. Partly I've just been a bit busy with boring and crappy things to be able to, and partly I've been saving them for a bit closer to Christmas, when I'm getting closer and closer to getting off work and can let my Christmas spirit fly with great abandon. Sorry if any of it gets on yous.

I have managed to see Elf, however. I saw it at a screening at the Ulster Museum, courtesty of the Movies at the Museum programme from the QFT. £2.70 to go see a movie in a lecture room at the museum on a Saturday afternoon really isn't a bad deal at all. Especially if you've got kids to bring with - an afternoon of movies and the museum for that price is really quite the bargain.

Anyway, back to the movie. Since I first saw this a year or so after it came out, Elf has become a firm favourite of mine at Christmas. It's just so flipping funny and so very, very sweet. It manages to be the perfect combination of heartwarming, hilarious, daft and offbeat to make it appealing to pretty much everyone of every age.

It's definitely in the top two or three of Will Ferrell's best performances, I reckon. Just thinking about all 6'3" of him in his elf costume running around New York City, chasing after people who forgot their hugs is enough to make me spontaneously break into fits of giggles. He's the perfect mix of daft and sincere, without being so over the top as to make his character cloying, which is a problem I've had with some of his more recent films.

This balance between sincere and ridiculous is also played out nicely by the levels of cynicism in the other characters, namely his real father Walter and love interest Jovie. The way in which their dim world view is broken is another thing that makes the film ring so true - they don't have some sort of manic conversion to the cult of Christmas, they just soften and thaw out a bit. It's believeable. Well, y'know, for a film about a 6'3" elf who grew up in the North Pole.

Plus, it's got a great script, great direction, great music (mostly big band/swing type classics, which is very much ok with me) and frankly if you don't love it, you're a wee bit wrong as far as I'm concerned.

As you can tell, these aren't exactly intended to be in-depth analyses of films from a terribly critical or knowledgable perspective or anything, it's really just some random thoughts from me. More to follow...at some point. Hopefully.