Arthur Christmas

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Christmas 2017

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Back around Christmastime of 2011, this title was released, and it's already become a sort of Christmas classic for many. Myself, included!

One Christmas Eve, Santa, AKA Malcolm (Jim Broadbent) has an excellent 70th year run with the help of his army of tactical elves, and son, Steve (Hugh Laurie) at the North Pole command center. However, upon cleanup, an elf named Bryony (Ashley Jenson) finds that one gift was undelivered.

Finding this out, Santa's other son, Arthur (James McAvoy) gets worried about the little girl not getting her present on Christmas morning while others seem to brush it off, basically saying it sucks, but she can get it delivered in a couple of days. Arthur, however, knows that the Christmas magic would be lost for her that way.

Arthur's Grandsanta (Bill Nighy) sympathizes with Arthur, and decides to help him out, and get the little girl's present to her before Christmas morning.

There's so many cool and interesting things about this movie. Being 2011, I reviewed it on my old site, and claimed it to be an "instant Christmas classic". Five years later, I'm happy to say that it still totally holds up.

For starters, I love that they come relatively close to making the whole Santa concept be plausible with new ideas. They change the sleigh into a gigantic, ID4-sized ship that can change it's camouflage. As mentioned before, Santa has a massive crew of tactical elves that dive into these houses, delivering the presents with some swift action. There's even tactics for distracting "wakers" so that they don't see Santa or the elves.

Secondly, it's good to see that the film takes breaks from it's overall humour to be kinda deep at points, injecting us with a bit of that Christmas magic we remember from our childhood. Some of the conversations in it can tug at the heartstrings a little bit, but without being too sappy.

Third, and once again, the overall animation and settings for the film are beautiful, and like 'Polar Express', highlight a lovely Christmas Eve night with a dark night, making it sort of magical.

Lastly, the overall humour in this is something special. There are quite a few good laugh out loud moments, mostly from Grandsanta or Bryony. But it contrasts so well against some more dramatic moments. It really does make for a good balance.

I still really enjoy this movie, and encourage people to check it out. It makes for an excellent family film if you're looking for something new and family-friendly, but it's just as enjoyable as an adult. In fact, as an adult, I felt it bring back some of the Christmas spirit that I had been missing in recent years.

5/5

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