Arthur Christmas 2011 Movie Reviews

Christmas is a great time of the year. The whole family comes together, children are excited, and joy fills the air. What better way to spend the festive season than seeing a family Christmas movie with your loved ones? Now, Aardman Animations has given us a very joyous movie that should be a Christmas classic for years to come.

Over the years, because of the world's expanding population, Santa Claus' Christmas Night deliveries has become a high-tech military operation, involving thousands of elves and a giant aircraft. Santa Claus' son, Steve (Hugh Laurie), runs logistics and intelligence in the North Pole and is set to become the next Santa Claus. His younger brother, Arthur (James McAvoy), is a very passionate young man who loves the spirit of Christmas, but is a bit of a klutz. Arthur is kept in the mail room to handle all of Santa's letters.

The Christmas delivery seems to be a big success, so much so that Santa Claus (Jim Broadbent) postpones his retirement, much to Steve's annoyance. But the worst thing imaginable has happened, a child has been missed. Steve refuses to delivers one bike because the margin of error was too small, so Arthur and his grandfather (Bill Nighy), who wants to show the old techniques still work, and the dedicated elf Bryony (Ashley Jensen) set out to ensure that one little girl is not the child Santa forgot. But their ambitions result in an adventure around the world as this band of misfits save Christmas for one child.

Like Pixar, Aardman believes that story and character have to come first and they make movies for children and adults alike. The movie is funny throughout, with plenty of the verbal jokes that children and adults will enjoy as well as some really well done physical humour and some slapstick. But this is a movie that understands children and what they want. The premise is simple, but the writing is strong and clever throughout the whole film and there are little touches that give Arthur Christmas that Aardman feel, from the pictures of the previous Santas to Steve's Christmas Tree goatee. Christmas is an exciting time for children and Arthur Christmas is just such a good-natured, fun movie that delivers on that spirit.

Some elements of Arthur Christmas are similar to Elf, mainly that Arthur is a big kid like Buddy who believes in the magic of Christmas. He is also a guy who does not quite fit in the North Pole and given a job that keeps him out of trouble. The score by Harry Gregson-Williams is very much like the score in Elf, particularly the choir, which sounds identical.

This is a cliché, but Arthur Christmas follows the old Hollywood maxim of "you make them laugh, you make them cry." It was filled with colourful, likable characters throughout that you will end up caring for despite their faults and expertly played by a top notch voice cast. I left the cinema with a massive smile on my face.

A wasted opportunity in that for all its good ideas and the stuff that it gets right, parts of it are predictable, cliched or just mildly unlikable. It never reaches its full potential, but it has a strong concept to go on and its very much an Aardman production in that whilst it... read more's not really hugely funny, it's incredibly charming.
The character designs are horrible and bland and the animation is boring and dull - it would look nicer if it was Aardman's usual stop-motion rather than CGI, but then I'd feel bad on them for putting so much effort into its look when it needed more effort putting into the script.
The cast is all great - but that doesn't stop the elves all being incredibly annoying due to their obvious character design and chipmunked vocals. But still, James McAvoy does his best to liven up a hideously generic character and Jim Broadbent, Hugh Laurie and especially Bill Nighy bring their usual extremely high quality work to the table.
And I should emphasise what I said before. It's very charming. So it has an interesting concept, a good cast and it's charming. It's far from being anything remarkable, but it's a decent enough effort and the best Christmas family film probably since 'The Nightmare Before Christmas'. And whilst it can't hold a candle to that film, it shits all over 'The Polar Express'.

Worth watching when it inevitably enters a cycle of being on the BBC every Christmas in 2 years time, but not worth making a trip to the cinema for.

Watch Movie Trailer on YouTube

"Arthur Christmas" breaks no new ground as an animated 3D film, but as a twist on the Santa Claus legend, it's charming, clever, and often times quite funny – too funny, at times, for really young children. What new things can we possibly learn about Jolly ol' St. Nick? For one thing, there has never been just one of him; the name Santa is, in fact, a title that's passed down from generation to generation. We also learn that technology has evolved up in the North Pole just as it has with the rest of the world. In the twenty-first century, Santa's sleigh has been replaced with a gigantic spaceship, the underside of which has the ability to mimic the sky. In their cavernous North Pole headquarters, elves sit in front of computers while gigantic screens display flight information. Other elves walk around with PDAs.

On Christmas Eve, presents are delivered via a military operation so precisely organized, it puts Disney/Pixar's "Prep & Landing" to shame. Thousands of elves descend from the ship on cables. They wear black ops uniforms and shout code names to one another. They have a wide variety of high tech gadgets; one can scan a person's head and determine the percentage of naughtiness and niceness, while another can cleanly cut into a wrapped package, penetrate the toy's box, and remove the batteries. If there's an emergency, such as a Waker (a person that wakes up before Santa and/or the elves have a chance to leave the room), they resort to any necessary means of escape, such as faking the sound of a passing semi truck. These little guys know what they're doing.

The current Santa (voiced by Jim Broadbent) has just completed his seventieth Christmas, and despite being constantly tired and increasingly disengaged from any particular situation, he says he's looking forward to his seventy-first. This disappoints his efficient but arrogant son, Steve (voiced by Hugh Laurie), who feels that the old man has had his day and that he should be the next in line. Meanwhile, Santa's other son, the clumsy but high-spirited Arthur (voiced by James McAvoy), sits all day in the mail department answering letters to children all over the world. He's particularly fond of one letter from a little girl named Gwen (voiced by Ramona Marquez), who lives in Cornwall, England. She believes in Santa, but she's admittedly baffled by the logistics. How exactly CAN he deliver presents to billions of children all over the world in just one night? A mix-up at North Pole Headquarters results in one present not getting delivered. Lo and behold, this would be Gwen's: A bicycle. It seems Santa was a little too premature in putting up that "Mission Accomplished" banner (yes, you know exactly what I'm talking about). Steve, not wanting to cause an uproar, says nothing to the elves and thinks the matter should be dropped. After all, who cares about one insignificant little girl? Everyone else got their presents, didn't they? This does not sit with Arthur, who believes every child should have a present to open on Christmas morning. No child left behind (and again, you know exactly what I'm talking about).

Arthur is encouraged by his cheeky 136-year-old Grandsanta (voiced by Bill Nighy) to deliver the present himself. However, it will be done the old fashioned way – with a vintage sleigh and the descendants of the eight original reindeer, who all conveniently have the same names (although Grandsanta can only remember three or four, and one of them he mistakenly calls Bambi). Grandsanta hates new technology. It was all better in his day. Arthur, despite being afraid of everything, decides he must save Gwen's Christmas before sunrise. Tagging along is an elf named Bryony (voiced by Ashley Jensen), who can gift-wrap anything in a matter of seconds, with enough time left over to put on a bow. So begins a high-flying adventure, made possible by magic dust created out of the Northern Lights. Several drastic detours will be made, the sleigh will eventually be mistaken for a UFO, most of the reindeer will get lost, and Steve and Santa will inevitably catch wind of the situation, stirring up a bitter family feud.

Although the film is bright and cheery enough for children, it's obvious to me that many of the jokes were written with their parents in mind. Consider one hilarious moment in which Arthur, Grandsanta, and Bryony find themselves zooming through the streets of Toronto; Grandsanta casually observes that absolutely no one lives there, making it ideal to quietly pass through on Christmas Eve. There's nothing inherently wrong with this; the parents deserve a laugh just as much as the children, especially if they pay extra for a 3D presentation. I certainly enjoyed the humor in "Arthur Christmas," but I also enjoyed the animation, the renderings, and most of all, the plot. Call me sentimental, but I agree with Arthur – little Gwen deserves a present just as much as all the other children on earth.