Review: Arthur Christmas

Santa’s gangly son takes on an almost failed Christmas in nifty frisky risky Aardmann fashion.

There’s no way you can’t enjoy Arthur Christmas – it is total entertainment. Except for the lions.

Christmas films get us tired and emotional. Few pass into the iconic status of, say, It’s A Wonderful Life, White Christmas, Miracle on 34th Street or A Christmas Story (TV movie, yes, but still great, if only for the gun, his brother and the leg lamp. This may have gone too far as the film now has its own online store). Then there are the season’s cynics – Bad Santa, Trading Places and Scrooged among them – lovingly crafted for those who think it’s all baloney but who also want to believe it isn’t.

Arthur Christmas, poised for the family market, overlaps those categories. Voiced by James McAvoy, Arthur is a gangly youth blindly enthusiastic about Christmas, while his father Santa (Jim Broadbent) lurches to mothballed retirement. Meanwhile, Grandsanta (Bill Nighy) remembers the old days before technology took over – specifically, Santa’s current Steven Spielberg-inspired sleigh. [Because this creation is such a visual surprise, I'm not going to show a picture. Parts of it are shown, however, on posters at Richard C Livingston's website. (Note: there is some erotica on the same page, NSFW.)]

The film hinges on the under-hope that holiday enthusiasm can annihilate crass Christmas marketing and automation. This is where Arthur’s older brother Steve comes in. He’s military on duty and Versace off duty, so, as much as a Christmas family film will allow, he’s vain, detached and oddly sexy. (He’s voiced by Hugh Laurie, so we can blame him for that). Steve is the “ghost” of Christmas future: his idea of Christmas will prevail unless something saves us from total mechanisation and heartless efficiency.

Then it is discovered that one good little child in England didn’t get the bike she wanted – sending the slick operation at the North Pole into mayhem. Exhausted by his efforts, Santa is virtually gripped by dementia, leaving Arthur to spring to action – aided by Grandsanta, a little Scottish elf called Bryony (voiced by Ashley Jensen) and some rather dumb, fluffy reindeer. As they fly off into the sky, Grandsanta explains how one person could deliver so many presents in one night. It’s all going so well until the team lose their way and end up travelling around the world – and just when the fun should be taking off, the story goes limp. Evil lions try to eat them in Africa (What? Lions aren’t nice? What about The Lion King then?), they get stuck in the ocean, on a beach and end up ripping off wrapping paper on the gift bike to fuel a fire – never mind that the bike magically appears rewrapped. (Rather than a goof, we must remember that Bryony has an elfen wrapping device with her at all times.)

Crazily creative and sparkling, Arthur Christmas would be a 100% solid hit if not for that mid-film lull (kids at the screening were getting a little squirmy). Whether this pace problem is down to Peter Baynham trying to inject more jeopardy into the script or if Smith was trying to make a more adventurous film, I don’t know. Kids’ films generally want to be shorter than longer.

Takeaway point: Arthur Christmas is a colourful, beautifully made seasonal family film that’s funny, fast-paced and incredibly imaginative. Without that 10 minute gap of meandering, it would be the perfect Christmas family flim – and it still may be if we’re watching it, as we are Elf, years after it is released.  It has everything a Christmas classic needs – elves, hilarity, old people, young people, people who don’t get it, snow, reindeer, sleighs, presents, wrapping.  It evokes a sense of seasonal magic as it melds old Christmas with new. Arthur Christmas’ jumper also makes a jolly replacement for Sarah Lund’s jumper from The Killing. (I may pass on Arthur’s reindeer slippers.)

See the official Arthur Christmas site here – but be warned, it has visuals which should be seen after after you’ve watched the film. That would be like peeking under the wrapping paper.