Elf
Dir by Jon Favreau

Who would have thought that the guy who brought us Swingers and Made would come out with a nice family-friendly Christmas movie?

The story of a child, Buddy (Will Farrell at his over-acting best), adopted by an elf (Bob Newhart) at the North Pole, who goes to New York to find his real father (Jimmy Caan). There is also the love interest, Jovie (Zooey Deschanel), and a variety of other supporting characters including a cameo by Kyle Gass of Tenacious D and Andy Richter as a duo of children's book authors who work for Caan, and Ed Asner as Santa Claus.

The acting is fine, with a standout performance by Farrell who makes each inappropriatly grand emotional response better than the last. Everyone else is servicable.

The movie is good and funny except for an abrupt change in pace and tone at the end with the introduction of the villanous Central Park Rangers that just comes across as oddly forced and out of place.

I also wonder if the scenes in the North Pole were originally planned to be done in stop motion. The snow and some of the creatures (including Leon the Snowman) are CGIed to look like the old stop-animation christmas specials, but with only parts of them being done this way it didn't quite come across right and I the movie picked up when they got away from them.

All-in-all your standard fish-out-of-water story with a strong performance from Farrell. If you like Will Farrell, you'll like this film, if you don't you probably won't.