Elf Discovery

Elf

Director: Jon Favreau

Cast: Will Ferrell, James Caan, Zooey Deschanel, Mary Steenburgen, Bob Newhart, Ed Asner, Peter Dinklage

Released: November 7, 2003

Viewed in theaters: November 8, 2003 and November 28, 2003

I know what you're thinking: How could I have this movie blog for nearly ten years (!!) and have never done a review on Elf, one of the most beloved Christmas movies of our time and a movie I've mentioned on several occasions (especially around this time of the year) as being one of my favorite holiday films? Well, the truth is, I DID write a review for this movie back in 2009, the year I started this blog. But it was a terrible review and only about two paragraphs long. Yeah, my early reviews are pretty terrible. I wouldn't recommend going back and reading them; seriously, don't. So I just deleted that one. But, shhh! Don't tell anyone! It will be our little secret. So now I'm giving this beloved Christmas classic the review it deserves.

I would be shocked if there's anyone out there who has never seen this movie. It's not just one of the funniest holiday movies I've ever seen, but one of the funniest movies I've seen, period. I'm sure I have seen it well over ten times (possibly even more!) and I still laugh at certain scenes even though I know what's coming up. I can pretty much recite the dialogue verbatim and have used many of the lines in my own life. Who haven't we called a "cotton-headed ninny muggins"? And while there are many important things in this world that I SHOULD know, but don't, I can proudly recite the four main food groups of elves: candy, candy canes, candy corns, and syrup. Because God knows when you're going to need to know that! (By the way, wouldn't candy canes and candy corns be lumped in with candy? Why do they get their own special group? I kinda get candy canes because they're synonymous with Christmas, but candy corn is more of a Halloween confection. If you really think about it, elves only have one major food group and it is SUGAR! We know Buddy LOVES sugar! I love the scene where he pours syrup all over his spaghetti, then crumbles a Pop Tart over it.)

It's fun to see the North Pole and Santa's workshop in the beginning of the film. I loved the way they created the North Pole; it's very reminiscent of those classic holiday specials like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Frosty the Snowman. You could have almost had a spinoff movie just based on that. Not only do you have Bob Newhart as Papa Elf (hmm, I guess The Smurfs don't have a trademark on that!) and Ed Asner as Santa and all the other elves, but you have Leon the snowman, the Arctic puffin, and Mr. Narwhal. The North Pole seems like this wonderful place to visit, however, I don't think it would be such a great place to work! Seems like those elves aren't getting a fair deal; not that I think they really care as they all seem to really love what they do. I love that the head elf tells them that Christmas was a success and that it's time to prepare for next year. It's literally Christmas Day and now they have to get ready for next year. Do they not even get a week off? I suppose when you have to make toys for all the kids in the world, you're going to be pretty busy and won't have any time to rest. Like in The Christmas Chronicles, this also seems to be another Christmas movie where kids only get one present from Santa as we see there's only one toy described next to their names in Santa's naughty/nice book. But to be fair to Santa, if you have to make every single kid in the world several toys, that could take quite a long time as I'm sure making all those kids ONE toy takes plenty of time as it is!

The elves kinda seem to be jerks because they shame Buddy when they learn he's only built 85 Etch-a-Sketches, making him 955 off pace. I remember having an Etch-a-Sketch as a kid. Come to think of it, was it even possible to draw anything but a few squiggles? I love that Buddy draws the Mona Lisa on one later when he's preparing for Santa's visit to the department store ("SANTA! I know him, I know him!"), but there's no way anybody could ever do that, right?? I think the worst part of being an elf would absoluetly have to be testing the Jack in the Boxes. I would be like Buddy, cringing ever time the creepy figurine would pop up and it would be even worse if it popped up later than expected. Jack in the Boxes are the devil's toy!

When Buddy learns he's actually a human and not an elf (took him awhile to figure that out and he only found out because he heard the elves talking about it), he decides to trek to New York City to find his father, Walter Hobbs (James Caan) who's on the...DUN DUN DUN....naughty list. I love how immediately after we're told this, we cut to a scene where we see Walter, who works at a publishing company, telling a sweet frail old nun he has to take back the books because they missed the payment and the nun says, "But the children love the books!" They're really showing us this guy is a real a-hole!

Will Ferrell is infectious and has a childlike earnest as Buddy that you can see why he's so likable, but you can also see why people would get impatient with him! A few years after this movie was released, I wrote a Harry Potter fanfic called Hogwarts' Next Top Witch (obviously a parody of America's Next Top Model) and there's a chapter where Harry, Ron, and Ron's dad go to Harrods and I blatantly stole a lot of things out of Elf  (don't worry; I gave the movie credit) when Buddy goes to Gimbel's: I had Arthur go through the revolving door about four times just like Buddy; I had him eagerly accept passion fruit spray, spraying it in his mouth just like Buddy; I had him afraid to go on the escalator, again, just like Buddy; and I had him push all the buttons on the elevator, just like Buddy does when he pushes all the elevator buttons when he's at the Empire State Building. ("It looks like a Christmas tree!") I told you I blatantly stole a lot of lot of things from Elf while writing that chapter! I visited New York a year and a half after Elf was released and I'm sure I mentioned something about that scene when we went to the Empire State Building. I have a feeling there's no way you could do that as they have people who work there manning the elevators, right? I don't remember for sure, but they must so people can't mess with the buttons. My friend and I once did that at a hotel in Denver (but there was, like maybe ten buttons instead of the 100 or so buttons the ESB probably has.) We also didn't do it while someone was in the elevator with us, but when we saw someone was getting on the elevator as we were exiting, we sure ran as hell!

I love when Buddy first meets Walter dressed in his green elf uniform and yellow tights and Walter tells him, "You look like you came from the North Pole" and Buddy's eyes light up and he replies, "That's EXACTLY where I came from!" Also, when he meets Walter's wife, Emily (Mary Steenburgen), and his son, Michael (Buddy's half-brother) and Emily asks him how long he'll be staying at their house, Buddy replies, "I haven't thought about it, but I was thinking forever." Hehe. That is the worst answer any house guest could ever give you!

Another great scene is when Jovie (Zooey Deschanel) is taking a shower in the Gimbel's restroom (do most department stores have a shower? Maybe it's just for employees) and Buddy is right outside and starts singing along with her. Normally this would be a totally creepy scene, but because it's Buddy and he doesn't know any better, it comes off as completely innocent. While it is cute that he falls for Jovie because she's wearing an elf uniform, it is a little weird that she falls for him since he has the mind of a child. It's like in Big when Elizabeth Perkins falls for a twelve-year-old who looks like a thirty-year-old Tom Hanks. But Jovie is important to the story because it is the mantra Buddy supplies her with, "The best way to spread Christmas cheer is singing loud for all to hear" that she uses when she gets all the people to sing Santa Claus Is Comin' To Town so Santa's sleigh can run on Christmas spirit. I'm not ashamed to tell people that I cry during Elf, especially during that scene. That scene gets me every time. EVERY TIME!

And of course another great scene is when a pre-Game of Thrones Peter Dinklage plays Miles Finch, a popular and highly-regarded children's author who has agreed to write a book for Walter's publishing company. Of course Walter's worst nightmare comes true when Buddy ends up coming in the room and is excited to see another elf and asks Finch if Santa knows that he's here. Rightly this should make any small person angry, but Miles, as we already saw in a previous scene is very high maintenance and thinks himself to be the greatest children's author since Dr. Seuss. He already has a very high ego so when Buddy calls him an elf, it really irks him and he dares Buddy, "Call me elf one more time!" and when Buddy declares, "He's an angry elf!", Miles runs across the table and kicks him in the chest. I loved that Buddy was certain he was a South Pole elf.

Lots of great scenes and great actors with great Christmas music makes this film a Christmas classic.

Bridge to Sadness and Despair

Bridge To Terabithia

Director: Gabor Csupo

Cast: Josh Hutcherson, AnnaSophia Robb, Robert Patrick, Zooey Deschanel

Released: February 16, 2007

We're going straight into spoiler territory right away with this one so if you have never seen the movie which has been out for eleven years or read the book which was published in 1977 (!!!), then you have been warned!!!! 

This would have been a good movie to do a double review with My Girl because they are very similar.  (Yeah, spoiler alerts for that movie too!) The obvious thing they have in common is they're both about a friendship between a boy and a girl, about eleven or twelve years old and at the end of the story one of these friends will die in a horrible accident caused by nature. In that one, it was the boy, and in this one, it's the girl. There are other similarities and I'll point them out, but that is the main one. I actually read this book around the same time I saw My Girl, so yeah, my childhood was pretty traumatizing around that time! I saw My Girl when I was in fifth grade and I read this book either in fourth or fifth grade. I've never revisited it, so I'm not sure how faithful the film is and whether or not it changed anything or added any characters. 

I would say another thing they have in common is that they're both set in the '70s, but actually, I think the film version of Terabithia is set in "present day" 2007. The school they attend looks very antiquated...they're using blackboards, for god's sake. By the late nineties, I definitely remember teachers using white boards with dry erase markers. Also, everything is rundown and shabby; nothing is new and modern, something you would find in a school in 2007. But then we see a scene where a teacher is telling a couple students to put away their "electronic devices" and we see the main character's sisters watching MTV, so that defintely nixes this movie being set in the '70s! The story is set in a rural part of the country where the characters don't have too much money, so I guess that's why everything looks the way it does.

Jess Aarons (Josh Hutcherson) strikes up a friendship with the new girl at school, Leslie Burke (AnnaSophia Robb), but it takes a few days to warm up to her because she beat him (and a bunch of other boys) in a footrace and he's known as being the fastest kid in the class. Jess is the middle child of five kids and has two older sisters and two younger sisters. The only one that's really relevant to the story is his sister May Belle (and I thought her name was Mabel for the longest time) who is the second youngest child. This is mainly because she and Jess share a room (a blanket hangs up to divide their halves of the room) and they go to the same school. The two older sisters are in high school and the youngest child is a baby. I was really confused by this school. May Belle is probably second or third grade and according to Wikipedia, in the book, Jess and Leslie are in fifth grade. I would say they're probably in sixth grade in the movie...the actors were around 13 when they made this, so I think them being fifth grades might be pushing it. However, there's a girl named Janice who is the school bully who also goes to this school and she's in eighth grade. What kind of school combines elementary and middle school? I have never heard of this. Maybe it's because they live in a small town and don't have the funds to create a middle school so they combine K-8 all together until they go on to high school? At first I thought they were in a middle school and May Belle rode on the same bus as her brother because her school was nearby, but no, they both go to the same school! I know, I know, it's a stupid thing to get caught up on.

Jess has a huge crush on his teacher, Ms. Edmunds and who can blame him because she's played by Zooey Deschanel so he's entranced by her pretty blue eyes and her lovely singing voice. She's the music teacher so she pretty much treats her classroom like it's School of Rock and all the kids are singing and playing instruments. They sing song such as "Why Can't We Be Friends" and "Ooh Ooh Child". This is another similarity to My Girl as Anna Chlumsky's character, Vada, had a crush on her teacher. 

Leslie lives next door to the Aarons with her liberal free-spirited parents who are both writers. I have to wonder if her parents actually make any money. Jess has more strict, grounded parents, especially his father (played by Robert Patrick) who tells him he needs to "keep his head out of the clouds" when he releases a wild animal (a opossum maybe?) that got caught in his dad's greenhouse because he didn't want his dad to kill it. One of the reasons the two become such good friends is not just because they share a love of running, but because they're both bullied. Jess is bullied because he has to wear a pair of one of his sister's hand-me-down pink sneakers to his first day of school. He tries to cover up the pink with a black marker, but it doesn't really help. Leslie is made fun of when she tells her teacher she doesn't have a TV after the teacher assigns the class to watch a nature show. All the kids laugh at her like she's the biggest loser to ever exist and when she explains, "My dad says TV kills your brian cells", she gets in a good comeback to one of the bully kids who tells her, "I watch TV everyday" by replying with, "I rest my case." 

The first time Jess and Leslie hang out, they come across a wide creek near their homes with a rope

swing. Let's just call it the Rope Swing of Doom. Leslie is intrigued by it, but Jess tells her it's been there forever and it's probably not safe. (Yes! Listen to your new friend, Leslie! He is the voice of reason!) However, she swings to the other side and back and tells him how much fun it is, so they both take a few turns on it. Leslie decides they need a place just for the two of them and swings to the other side where she jumps off and Jess follows her. They call this new place Terabithia and both kids, especially Leslie, the daughter of two fiction writers, have vivid imaginations (or maybe just really good drugs!) They imagine that the trees are giant trolls, that the dragonflies are small warriors, that the squirrels are these creatures out to get them, and the sound of an old wind chime is the sound of prisoners rattling their chains. I guess you need a wild imagination when you don't have a TV! They come across this pretty amazing run-down tree house which they fix up and make their own. 

So cute!

Jess is very artistic and loves to draw, so for his birthday, Leslie presents him with a (rather nice) set of paints and brushes while they're on the bus on their way to school. Jess tells her it must have cost a fortune, but yet, later, decides to give Leslie a dog. I think giving someone a dog is a much bigger deal than giving someone a paint set! They name him Prince Terrian, P.T. for short, and take him on their adventures to Terabithia where they use him as a troll hunter. Okay, I have a few questions: how was he able to afford the dog? Did he ask Leslie's parents permission first before he got the dog for her? And most importantly, how the hell did they get the dog across the creek? They didn't swing on the rope with the dog in one hand and their other hand holding the rope, did they? Or did the dog swim across? 

After Janice, the 8th grade bully (maybe she would be a little nicer if she didn't have that horrible haircut with the awful bangs...just saying!) is mean to May Belle AND purposely falls down on the bus and blames Jess for tripping her so he is booted off the bus, both Jess and Leslie decide it's time to teach her a lesson. They write her a note, pretending it's from the cutest boy in eight grade, Willard, (seriously? The cutest boy in the eight grade is named Willard?) because surely she has a crush on him. In the note, which Jess writes while Leslie dictates, "Willard" tells Janice that he really likes her and hopes they can ride home on the bus together and see where things go from there. While Janice is waiting outside the bus for Willard and tells him she got his note and she saved them a seat on the bus, he's very confused and of course he's with all his friends and they just laugh at her as well as everybody else on the bus who witness this embarrassing display. However, a few days later, Leslie hears Janice sobbing in the girls' bathroom and wonder if they went too far. She talks to Janice and we later find out that Janice is mean to everyone because her dad hits her. I looked up the plot summary of the novel on Wikipedia to see if that was part of the book, and it is. Even down to the boy named Willard, so that explains the old-fashioned name. 

Another similarity this movie shares with My Girl is the foreshadowing of the impending death. We get it in that movie when Macaulay Culkin asks Anna Chlulmsky what heaven is like. It's done a lot more nicer in that movie; in this one, it's a little dark! Leslie, who is an atheist (although that word is never uttered), goes to church one Sunday with Jess's family. BTW: her white coat is totally amazing. She seems to enjoy the experience and on the way home, she sits in the back of the pickup truck with Jess and May Belle. She tells them she thinks the whole "Jesus thing" is really interesting, but the two Aarons kids disagree and think it's scary. May Belle tells her, "It's because we're all vile sinners, God made Jesus die." Leslie asks them, "You really think that's true?" and Jess confirms, "It's in the Bible." Leslie tells them, "You have to believe [the Bible] and you hate it. I don't have to believe it and I think it's beautiful." May Belle then drops a huge bomb on her and tells her, "God will damn you to Hell when you die if you don't believe in the Bible." Eeshh! I like Leslie's response with, "I seriously do not think God goes around damning people to Hell...he's too busy running all this!" and waves her hands around her to indicate the world around them. 

The final goodbye

Jess gets in big trouble when he loses his dad's set of keys and if they have to be replaced, it will cost $600. Except he didn't misplace them; May Belle took them because she knew Leslie was looking for something that clanged and clinked to sound like bells. She thought Terabithia needed bells after hearing the church bell from the service she attended. Rightly, Mr. Aarons is super angry with Jess because these keys cost a fortune and are a part of his job. I find it ridiculous that neither May Belle nor Leslie thought it would be wrong to take the keys. Did they not think that someone would need this set of keys? Leslie claims May Belle told her she found them on the ground, but still, you would think someone lost their keys and they weren't just junk. When Jess and Leslie go to fetch the keys, it will be their last adventure together in Terabithia, unbeknownst to them. :::sniff::: 

The following day, a Saturday, Ms. Edmunds calls Jess to take him on a date, I mean, a field trip. I'm sorry, I know they say "field trip", but this was totally a date! They go into the city to visit an art museum and have a cappuccino at the cafe! And when she drops Jess of at his home, he says, "Maybe we can do this again sometime" and she replies with, "Absolutely!" Okay, let me back up. Ms. Edmunds knows about Jess's artistic side and calls him up that morning to invite him to an art museum because she was planning on taking her nephews there, but they weren't able to make it, so she decided to invite Jess in lieu of them. I understand the point of this was to get Jess out of the house and have his parents not know where he is (he does ask his mom, but she's still sleeping and barely says "yes" when he asks if he can go). They also can't make this a class field trip because otherwise Leslie would be there and another point of this is for her not to be there, although when they pass her house, Jess almost seems to want to invite her along (which he will regret not doing for the rest of his life, poor kid), but decides against it because he wants Ms. Edmunds' company all to himself. If this ever happened in this day and age, that teacher would be arrested in a hot minute! I think it would have been a little better if she still took her nephews, but also invited Jess. At least it wouldn't look like a date! Yes, I did look this up, and yes, this does happen in the book, although maybe times were much different in the '70s and nobody blinked an eye if they saw a teacher having "one on one" time with her student.

When Jess returns home later that afternoon, his parents are relieved to see him, as they already know about Leslie's death and think maybe something had happened to him too. Jess gets a weird vibe from his family and asks what's going on and his father bluntly says, "Your friend Leslie is dead." They tell him the rope swing broke and she hit her head on a rock. This is around the time I lose it and start crying. Poor Jess is in denial and when he sees Ms. Edmunds at her service, he tells her, "Next time we should invite Leslie to go," as if Leslie is still alive. Oh, God, poor kid, you know that will haunt him for the rest of his life. He even tells his dad it's his fault, that he didn't want to invite her to the museum, when he finally breaks down and realizes that his best friend is dead, but his dad tells him it's not his fault. I then get another fresh set of tears when Jess is afraid that Leslie has been damned to Hell, but his dad reassures him that "God would never send that little girl to Hell". Mr. Burke tells Jess that he was the best friend Leslie ever had. Seriously, stop making me cry, movie!

There's quite a change in the music class. Instead of being happy and dancing around with the instruments, all the students are singing a song, something about "I wanna know what's over that rainbow" while looking sullen. Poor Jess has his arms folded on his desk with his head resting on them and it's the saddest sight. I bet all these kids feel bad for making fun of Leslie now for not owning a TV! That has got to mess you up, though. To be a kid and have another kid in your class die. Though not everybody is sensitive about her death. One of the bully kids tells Jess, "Guess you're the fastest kid in class now." Good Lord! What kind of a-hole says something like that? Jess punches him. The kid totally deserved it.

The rope swing has been replaced with a bridge that Jess has built with lumber. It's actually pretty impressive what he built.  He invites his sister to enter the world of imagination that he and Leslie created and makes May Belle the Princess of Terabithia. I love how she says it like it's two words: "Tera. Bithia."

David Paterson, the son of the book's author, Katherine Paterson, helped co-write the screenplay. I was actually surprised it took them thirty years to make this a feature film, especially since it was based on a popular book, or at least a well-known book. Yes, it shares similarities with My Girl. To me, it's hard to think of one without thinking of the other, but they also have plenty of differences. Also, My Girl came out fourteen years after Bridge to Terabithia was published and they didn't make a movie about it in those years? Although I discovered it was made into a TV movie in 1985. Apparently it's terrible and that's probably why I wasn't aware of it! Okay, I just watched a clip of it on YouTube, and eesh, the kids who play Jess and Leslie are godawful actors - it's not a surprise neither of their careers took off! It's nice that they finally got a good adaptation of the book, although it took awhile, but sometimes you have to be patient!