Tagline:
This Holiday, discover your inner elf.

Wide Release Date:
November 7, 2003

Directed by:
Jon Favreau
Written by:
David Berenbaum
Produced by:
Jon Berg, Todd Komarnicki, Shauna Robertson

Starring:
Will Ferrell
James Caan
Zooey Deschanel
Mary Steenburgen
Daniel Tay
Edward Asner
Bob Newhart

PREGAME THOUGHTS

I saw this in freshman year of college, 2005. Back then, they had little offices where you could rent DVDs for free before the age of streaming. Good times.

I don’t remember a THING about Elf except that Zooey Deschanel had blond hair, which is the opposite hair color that I prefer Zooey Deschanel to have. Obviously, the movie barely left an impression. Let’s try again.

THE 600(ish)-WORD SYNOPSIS

Once upon a midnight dreary — Christmas Eve, to be precise — Santa (Ed Asner) fucks up by accidentally stealing a baby from an orphanage. Instead of returning the baby to the orphanage like he should have, Santa instead opts to let the elves decide to raise the kid amongst themselves. “Papa Elf” (Bob Newhart) adopts him as his own child. His name is Buddy and he grows up to be 6’3″ Will Ferrell, full of energy and positivity and childlike glee. He struggles doing elf stuff, such as making toys quickly, and he overhears a conversation about how he’s actually a human. Papa Elf spills the beans on Buddy’s origin story: his dad is James Caan aka Walter, his mom is some lady who put him up for adoption, and he can find his family in New York City. Beautiful! Buddy sets out to New York City to find his dad and instill some Christmas cheer into the old grump’s withered heart.

You look like an idiot, Buddy. Put some green clothes on.

Upon arriving in NYC, Buddy gallivants around town making a public spectacle out of himself. Running into traffic. Eating gum off handrails. He happens upon the Empire State Building where Walter works, but is quickly escorted out by security who sarcastically tell him that, dressed up as an elf, Buddy should be at Gimbels department store. He takes the advice and gallivants around the store a bit before bumping into and meeting Jovie (Zooey Deschanel), a young woman working as one of Santa’s elves in the store. She really Zooey Deschanels her performance, I’ll tell you that much. You probably don’t have to use much of your imagination. Buddy “falls in love” in a very PG way even though Jovie has no reason whatsoever to reciprocate romantic interest. When Buddy learns that the mall Santa will start showing up the next day, he spends the whole evening alone in the store decorating. Too bad that the Gimbels Santa is a sham. An Artie Lange sham, if you will. Buddy makes a scene and gets sent to jail.

Walter bails Buddy out of jail for some reason and allows for an administration of a DNA test to confirm that Buddy is indeed his son. Buddy is indeed his son. Walter takes Buddy home to meet his family: wife Emily (Mary Steenburgen) and son Michael (Daniel Tay). Emily, because she’s possibly mentally challenged in some way, wants to take care of Buddy until he “comes to his senses”. Michael isn’t too keen on the overgrown elf, but he warms up Buddy after he helps him in a snowball fight against his bullies. Michael then plays wingman and gets Buddy to ask Jovie out on a date. She accepts for some reason, has a good time in spite of everything, and kisses him at the end of the date for reasons I cannot fathom.

Welcome to Gimbels where the elves are all sarcastically thrilled to see you!

Walter takes Buddy to work, where visiting best-selling children’s author Miles Finch (Peter Dinklage) gets belittled (ha!) by Buddy who mistakes him for an elf. Peter Dinklage kicks his ass. Casterly Rock! This causes Walter to hoot and holler at him, disown him, and throw his feces at him. Buddy is sad and leaves.

The last third of the movie is a bunch of Santa shit. Santa’s sleigh won’t work unless everyone believes in Santa. Well, no one believes in Santa. That is, until, everyone starts believing in Santa. Santa’s sleigh works when Walter believes in Santa. Walter isn’t mad at Buddy anymore. Buddy writes a picture book about himself, which Walter sells as part of his new publishing company. Buddy and Jovie get married and have a baby named Susie. They visit Papa Elf. Everyone has a good Christmas. L’Chaim.

Just wait until he rips a huge fart on ya, Papa Elf. And I’m not talking about the baby.

TOM’S DISCUSSION CORNER

TOPIC 1 — General Movie Thoughts

I’m only slightly charmed by Will Ferrell’s antics in Elf. Ferrell can be very hit or miss for me, and seeing Elf for the first time after seeing Anchorman (which I didn’t like) but before seeing Old School (which I barely liked more) probably didn’t help. I thought trying it again about 18 years later with a more open mind would help, but I more often than not find Ferrell’s portrayal of Buddy the Elf annoying, and not in a good way. In fact, I spent a lot of time cringing. Call me a jerk, I don’t care.

I liked the part where he awkwardly ascended the escalator, though. That was funny!

Welcome to Gimbels where the elves are 6’3″ tall and afraid of escalators!

The romance subplot with Zooey Deschanel’s Jovie is bereft of chemistry, even for a light and heartfelt Christmas flick. Deschanel puts on her usual dry performance and I never really believe that she became somewhat infatuated with this 6ft-tall childlike elf and his off-putting social behavior. If I took a lady out on a date and she was running around the revolving doors of building entrance, you can bet your butt that I wouldn’t want to kiss her later. Unless she was extremely good looking. But even then? Pfft. Uh… maybe.

And are we just to accept that Mary Steenburgen’s Emily is willing to take in his husband’s bastard son, a grown-ass man who thinks he’s an elf? Oh no no no, I don’t think so. I would’ve smacked his tuchus with a frying pan and sent him on his merry way.

James Caan’s performance as Buddy’s biological father was great, though, and probably the most relatable character in the movie. I’d be acting the same way, with even less patience, about this weirdo dropping into my life. I like to think that Caan hated Ferrell’s performance and found him obnoxious both on and off the set. The irritation from his character was definitely real. I wouldn’t put up with Will Ferrell prancing around either. I would’ve smacked his tuchus with a baseball bat and sent him on his merry way.

Mmmm, syrupy spaghetti.

The absolute best part of the movie was the surprise appearance of Peter Dinklage as an arrogant best-selling children’s author who beats the shit out of Buddy for calling him an elf. Just imagine Tyrion Lannister jumping Sandor Clegane and chewing his ear off Mike Tyson-style for calling him an imp. Not that it would’ve disfigured him much more than he already had been! Will Ferrell could stand to lose an ear or two, though.

TOPIC 2 — Faizon Love

I didn’t get a screenshot of Faizon Love, but Faizon Love rules. End of story.

IMDb TRIVIA FUNHOUSE!

Several minor traffic accidents occurred when Will Ferrell walked through the Lincoln Tunnel in his costume, because people were so surprised (and distracted from their driving) to see him wearing an elf outfit.
You just know that they used “minor” as a qualifier because they’re hiding the fact that there was at least one “major” accident. Like a decapitation.

The scene when Buddy eats different candies and pastries with the spaghetti noodles had to be shot twice, because Will Ferrell vomited the first time.
“Hey Will, you fucked this up the first time! Throw more shit on top of shit and try it again until we get it right!”

Maple syrup, Hershey’s syrup, M&Ms, Pop Tarts, noodles, all with undertones of vomit and bile.

Wanda Sykes was originally slated to play the Gimbel’s Manager but backed out at the last minute. She was replaced by Faizon Love, who insisted on still wearing the nametag made for Sykes, which is why his tag inexplicably says “Wanda”.
Faizon Love rules, end of story.

Bob Newhart claimed that of all the fan mail he received, usually half of it was for “Elf”.
Ah yes, Bob Newhart’s over-the-top Elf role. Famous for being extremely memorable. Not at all Bob Newhart-y like the rest of Bob Newhart’s characters for the last 80 years.

Before making the film, Jon Favreau would observe his 1-year-old son, Max, to get ideas for what Buddy might do. As Favreau notes, Max was his barometer for how believable Buddy’s antics were.
*blub* *drool* *snort* Thank you, Max. This is perfect.

IS IT WORTH A WATCH?

I’m going to be honest here, I don’t see what all the fuss is about. My guess is that you had to be super young for your first Elf viewing to want to see it year after year. I personally found most of the movie dull, with the middle act of Buddy getting used to New York and his family the only part I really enjoyed. It’s a good family movie, though. Maybe I’ll show it to my kids one day, and they’ll be like “who’s the weird guy prancing around in tights?” And I’ll be like “the funniest man of my generation, apparently.”

Tagline:
To save his future he must alter his past.

Wide Release Date:
January 22, 2016

Directed by:
Jacob Gentry
Written by:
Jacob Gentry
Produced by:
Christopher Alender, Alexander Motlagh

Starring:
Chad McKnight
A. J. Bowen
Brianne Davis
Scott Poythress
Michael Ironside

PREGAME THOUGHTS

♫ ♬♫ ♬
We know you
They know me
Extrasensory
Synchronicity
A star fall
A phone call
It joins all
Synchronicity
♩ ♪ ♫ ♬♩ ♪ ♫ ♬♩ ♪ ♫ ♬♩ ♪ ♫ ♬

THE 750(ish)-WORD SYNOPSIS

I think this takes place in the future! There’s this guy named Jim, a physicist, played by a guy named Chad McKnight who doesn’t even have his own Wikipedia page! This guy’s the star of the movie! He kinda has a young Daryl Hall look to him. You see, this Jim guy, he’s cracking time travel! He and his two buddies, the less nerdy Chuck (A. J. Bowen) and the more nerdy, possibly profoundly autistic Matty (Scott Poythress), work hard, sleepless nights trying to create a wormhole from the machine via very dangerous and expensive practices. One wrong move and everything explodes and takes out half of North America with it! Maybe. They didn’t actually say that in the movie, but it’s part of my overflowing Synchronicity headcanon. The machine requires radioactive material that is supplied from a company owned by Klaus Meisner (Michael Ironside), who is their principal funder and he’s got them all by the balls.

What do you mean it’s too dark in here?! Get some better eyeballs!

It’s important to know that one test creates one half of the wormhole, and a second test creates the other half of the wormhole. That part’s important. Don’t forget it or the next paragraph won’t make sense! Got it?! Good!!!

Ok, let’s get into it! Jim and Co. run their first test and receive a Dahlia flower encased in a glass cylinder from the wormhole. That’s cool! They don’t have enough radioactive material anymore to run a second test, which is something they should have planned ahead on. Jim and Co. can’t prove the machine actually works without the second half of the wormhole, so they beg Klaus for more money. He wants 50% ownership of the machine and the process, but Jim gives him 49%. Klaus is ok with that. For now. The second test is scheduled one week ahead.

Jim meets Abby (Brianne Davis), an impossibly attractive young woman, right outside of the facility. Jim gets suspicious right away because she kinda sorta seems to maybe know who he might be. Possibly. Things get weirder when his beardy buddy Chuck calls him and tells him not to trust Abby at all. It’s like, how does Chuck know this unless… *gasp* …did she come through the wormhole along with the Dahlia?!??!?!

Well, whatever. Jim starts boning Abby who, for some reason, likes him back. They bone for a while until Abby does something untrustworthy: tells Klaus about the flower. Now Klaus, because the flower is property of another one of his companies (?), threatens Jim with a big fat lawsuit and extorts him for 99% percent ownership of the machine. Little Jim gets 1% and now he’s a sad sack.

He’ll never see me sitting over here. It’s too dark.

So now that Jim is all busted up and broken, he gets impulsive during the second wormhole test and runs through the machine in front of his friends, Abby, and Klaus. This is proof that he sent something through the wormhole that wasn’t Klaus’ property. Jim is transported to one week prior, the day of the first test.

This is when the movie gets Back to the Future II on our asses. New Jim plays through some of the events on his own time as Old Jim starts his relationship with Abby, including meeting Abby before Old Jim meets her, and telling Chuck to call Old Jim to warn himself about Abby. Among other things, Abby interacts with both of them and New Jim learns that her motivations with him did not involve scheming or unseemly motives. As time goes on, New Jim’s health starts deteriorating from what I can only fathom as TIME SICKNESS, especially when he’s in close proximity to Old Jim. Paradoxes and whatnot. Things in this world are slightly, ever so slightly, different. Parallel universe, one Jim cannot live while the other survives. It’s a real trip, man.

When the day of the second test arrives, New Jim tries to leave the city. When he tries to get a room at a hotel, he learns that he himself has already booked a room. He finds another version of himself dead on the bed.

Here, I wanted you to have this flower. I don’t know if you can see it in the dark, though…

New Jim goes back to the hotel across from Abby’s apartment that he has been staying at to avoid Old Jim, where he learns that Abby was attempting to get more radioactive material to open the second wormhole to save New Jim’s life. It didn’t work! Abby finds him dead as a doornail, which is quite dead, in fact. Very dead.

Later, while Abby sits alone in a café, she is approached by Old Jim. He’s in good shape! This is because when he entered the wormhole, this time all the Jim’s were dead. The universe he ended up in had no Jims. No Jims to make anyone sick. Jimless. Do you get it? Good. Abby continues her relationship with him.

TOM’S DISCUSSION CORNER

TOPIC 1 — General Movie Thoughts

Time travel paradox movies are tough to pull off because such a story needs room to breathe. Over the course of a multiple TV episode arc, if done right, can be real satisfying trip. 100 minutes? Oof, good luck. I think Synchronicity almost gets it right until they start talking about parallel universes and multiple dimensions with slight differences. I’m a firm believer of the “whatever happened, happened” Lost rules of time travel vs. the “YOU HAVE TO FIX THE FUTURE, MARTY” Back to the Future rules of time travel. Even if Back to the Future is in my top five movies of all time, it still irks me that altering the past can influence the future. Because I have a Bachelor’s in Astrophysics (literally), you can take my word as gospel that time is a constant as a temporal dimension — the fourth, if you will — and it already exists as it is and as it forever shall be. Don’t get me started on philosophical conversation of determinism vs. free will, damnit. That’s a topic for another laborious crafted blog post.

Hello, is this the Electric Company? We’re in the dark over here!

I thought the movie was following the Lost tenet of time travel until Matty talks about the impossibility of two Jims existing in the same universe, pointing out the necessity of a jump into a parallel universe for it to have happened. Boo to that! It’s perfectly fine for New Jim to just flat out die as he does in the same universe, ending the Jim continuum once and for all. That’s when Jim’s time should be up. Instead, they bring in a third alternate Jim dead on a hotel bed after New Jim attempts to book a room, which wasn’t kosher. Plus, little differences between the universes such as location of Abby’s notebook (Abby’s apartment in one, Jim’s pocket in another). It makes for a knotty, somewhat confusing narrative.

The story was ok, but the acting wasn’t the greatest. I don’t know who Chad McKnight is; he must be a friend of Jacob Gentry. Dude doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page. His acting was probably better than anyone else’s in the movie, save for Michael Ironside. Brianne Davis sucked, but she was the obligatory sci-fi movie eye candy. I liked her haircut, but not her acting!

This movie is apparently a love letter to Blade Runner, but I can’t comment upon that since I’ve never seen either Blade Runner. So I’ll just make a bold claim, sight unseen, that yes, this is just like Blade Runner! You are quite welcome.

TOPIC 2 — Putting Myself in Jim’s and Abby’s Shoes

Here’s something I like to do! I like to place myself within movie and TV characters because I’m a big, insufferable nerd. Abby’s plot path is more interesting, but let’s start with Jim. His adventure begins when he opens up the first half of the wormhole and thinks that the girl of his dreams stepped out of it. He’s got people telling him not to trust her, he’s got himself to tell him not to trust her, and she seems to be doing things that happen to be untrustworthy. OK. Fine. And he spends most of his time rerunning through the week gripping his head and grunting. Then he dies. That must suck. Time travel sucks.

A game of darts will take our minds off the blackout…

ABBY! She gets to see New Jim right before Old Jim leaves the facility, so she has the upper hand in this relationship before the end of minute one. In the second half, you see Abby interact with both Jims back and forth. Keeping a relationship going, dealing with Jim’s paranoia about what turned out to be her own sci-fi story instead of a collaboration with Klaus, and trying to help save him as he’s dying. A tall order for two weeks of knowing someone who is likely half-delirious from lack of sleep.

What about Klaus’ shoes? No. Fuck that guy.

IMDb TRIVIA FUNHOUSE!

According to the director’s commentary, the scene in which Jim runs out of the lab and encounters Abby was filmed under the Georgia Dome.
They had to work around the Atlanta Falcons’ practice session. Chad McKnight got hit in the head with a football 43 times during only 5 takes.

During the scene where Jim is driving away from dinner. The bat signal is shown in the sky from one of the buildings.
LOL! SOMEBODY IS A BATMAN FAN! NEEERDS!

I WAS BLIND AND, BEHOLD, NOW I SEE, BABY!

IS IT WORTH A WATCH?

I kinda liked it! But you probably won’t. And I won’t see it again. The reviews are horrible across the board, but I’m extremely forgiving when it comes to time travel stories. It’s my favorite stupid sci-fi plot device, after all. If you’re a similar idiot, then give it a shot.

Plus, it’s kinda cool how this film looks like it’s right out of the ’80s. They did a good job with production. OK, I’m done.