J.D. Hansel

Film Criticism

Elf Review: Upon Further Consideration…

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People who find out that I dislike Elf tend to assume that I am either a Scrooge or a devil.  The truth is that I am a skeptic.

As I often explain, this means I like reason, logic, the scientific method, asking questions, and staying curious.  What I dislike is the promotion of belief.  When I say belief, in this case, I mean it the way my English 101 professor defined it: something accepted as truth based on faith.  The problem here is that belief and faith are essentially interchangeable terms: it’s hard to define one without the other, and the best way out of this definition cycle is to incorporate terms like conviction or assurance into the cycle, which just widens the circle without breaking it.  This is by design though – the whole point of “believing” is that you don’t have good, logical reasons for your views, but you choose to accept them anyway (generally because they bring a sense of “hope,” as is implied by the excellent definition of faith offered by Hebrews 11:1).  The problem with belief, or at least this kind of belief, is that it discourages questioning and challenging ideas, which makes it the enemy of the skeptic.

This is why I get so annoyed with Hollywood films, and I often use Elf as my primary example of this issue.  In this film, being a bad person is synonymous with being a skeptic, which in this case means believing Santa Claus does not exist.  Becoming a good person, according to logic of Christmas films such as Elf, is directly tied to becoming a believer.  The father exemplifies the Hollywood metamorphosis from bad to good: he starts out heartless, but then he realizes that his family is more important to him than his job, and from there he gets to see some sign that Santa is real (namely, he meets Santa, but seems unsure as to whether or not it’s really him).  He then opens his heart by singing Christmas songs, and then becomes a believer in Santa, and then is finally free to be a happy, loving, and moral person.  Note how singing the Christmas carol, even when one does not believe in the words, serves as a sort of speech act, verbally claiming one’s “faith” until an actual belief develops, which is commonly done when converting to a religion.  In other words, what Elf is promoting is a religious kind of faith in Santa Claus – a belief regardless of belief, in a sense – and it assumes that this belief is tantamount to having a happy spirit.

We have to consider how significant this really is.  Every year, we are indoctrinating children with these ideas, and we are re-training our own adult brains to think in these terms.  We teach our children and ourselves that morality comes with faith.  Even if you don’t accept the moral problem here, at least consider how absurd it is that we want to watch movies that tell us to believe in Santa Claus.  Santa Claus is the one thing in this world that every adult knows about, but doesn’t believe is real, and yet, here we are telling ourselves to pretend it’s real so that we can be good people.  How insane could a culture be?

I should be able to stop here; the case is closed, right?  No, because I now have to address an important objection to my argument: why Elf?  If this problem runs rampant throughout other Hollywood films – particularly Christmas movies – why is it Elf that always works me up?  Why not The Polar Express?

Indeed, The Polar Express is far more evil than Elf, or at least it’s more explicit and extreme in its propagation of the same evils.  The title song is called “Believe” for a reason – that’s the message of nearly every scene in the movie.  Every few minutes, the protagonist is taught not to ask so many questions, and the importance of following one’s heart is drilled into the viewers head more times than I can count.  What hurts me the most is that the unnamed hero really isn’t closed-minded – he’s curious, as is demonstrated by the fact that he’s looked into the question of Santa Claus and collected evidence to inform his views, like a good thinker.  In my opinion, this means he is a very good person at the start of the film – someone we should want to be a leader someday – but it is the girl (the believer) who is told to lead, and the protagonist who is told to believe.  Stories designed to discourage curiosity and questioning, such as many of the fairy tales in the Germanic tradition, have infamously been used as tools to empower dictators, so I cannot help but see The Polar Express as a danger akin to Triumph of the Will.

Yet, there are many good reasons why I harp on Elf more than Polar Express, although the first reason has nothing to do with the contents of either film.  Because people talk about Elf more, they are far more likely to bring up Elf around me, so my rants on this topic are usually sparked by Elf just because folks want to know why I’m not a fan.  As for the film itself, it isn’t a terrible movie, apart from the aforementioned ethical issue.  It begins on the highest note possible, with allusions to classic Christmas specials and old family films, narrated by the brilliant and legendary Bob Newhart.  The problem is that it mostly goes downhill from here, focusing on an annoying protagonist, rehashing the cliches of all the other family comedies of the time period, and forcing the story to work even if it makes little sense.  In short, once Buddy leaves Santa’s Workshop, the next half hour is just Will Ferrell acting like a stupid, awkward man-child, getting cheap laughs from immature behavior like a middle-schooler, and the last half hour is a random about-face to drama with Buddy saving Christmas (as though somehow the movie was about that the whole time).

There’s no convincing me that the third act isn’t a mess.  Santa’s flight problem more or less pops out of nowhere, the father’s change of heart has no setup, and a couple hundred more people singing Christmas songs than usual is weirdly conflated with literal belief in Santa Claus on a massive scale.  I’m particularly confused about how the news network realized that there was even a news story worth covering here since they started the piece with a picture of a man dressed as an elf walking around Central Park, as though that’s newsworthy for New York City.  It’s all very forced and awkward, just like Jovie’s uncomfortably fast integration into Buddy’s whimsical life (it is always the exact moment when Jovie says the word “Papa” at the end when I realize I have just wasted 90 minutes of my life on foolishness).  I don’t demand realism from a film, but I do expect believability – I want the actions of the characters to follow from who the characters are, but this film feels cheesy because the characters sing so the scene can be happy.  The climax is the epitome of cheesy sentimentality, and it makes me see the film as a dumpster-fire of mindless sappiness.

Again, the film starts strong.  The use of the stop-motion characters is brilliant.  The costumes are delightful.  Some of the casting is really smart.  The music, including both score and soundtrack, is the best music of any Christmas production since Muppet Christmas Carol, or perhaps even A Charlie Brown Christmas.  Much of the film’s strength comes from Zooey Deschanel, who is clearly one of the greatest musical talents of our time, and I hope she goes down in history as a music legend.  Some parts make me laugh a little, but this is no Marx Brothers film; it’s a Jon Favreau, which means it has some intelligence behind it and some good personal touches, but it’s not good enough for me to really like it.  At least The Polar Express has Bob Zemeckis at the help and keeps me wanting to see what inventive and whimsical treats are in store if I keep watching, whereas Elf uses up its creativity in the first half and then succumbs to trite “save Christmas” and “restore the family” formulas as it progresses.

In all honesty, though, I don’t like Elf because it’s overplayed and overrated.  If most people felt that the film was only passable, acceptable, tolerable, mediocre, or below-average, I probably wouldn’t care about it much.  Unfortunately, this film is hailed by many as the greatest Christmas film of all time, and it is frequently marathoned on television and shown to children in schools.  Some would say that this is not a good reason to dislike the film, and I would agree with that, if not for the ethical problem.

I tend to think in consequentialist terms, so I look at the effects of an action, choice, or occurrence to determine if it is good or bad.  The Polar Express is not widely celebrated – its reviews were mixed at best – but Elf is a holiday juggernaut.  Children will see Elf, and it will firmly reinforce our poisonous cultural norms surrounding the importance of belief.  Elf may not be the worst propagator of anti-skeptic doctrines, but it is certainly among the worst, and it has the biggest following of devoted disciples.  This is what makes it such a dangerous cultural cancer.  We already have enough people in America who believe in what they hope for with or without evidence: they are called Trump supporters, and the younger voters in his camp grew up with Elf.  People do not learn to be good people from watching Elf; they learn to enjoy formulaic Hollywood films, they learn to accept cheap laughs as good comedy, they learn to quote a narwhal with a funny voice, and they learn that being a skeptic is bad.  Elf may have its clever moments, and I understand its appeal, but it is nonetheless among the worst Christmas presents the world has ever received.

The Nightmare Before Christmas Review

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This film has been a source of inner conflict for me for a long time.  I saw most of it years ago, but I couldn’t finish it.  I found it too boring, even though I recognized its creativity.  I thought that I could overcome this dilemma by coming back to it a few years later, but sadly, I’m still caught in the same spot.

This film is brilliant.  Its visuals are absolutely stunning, and the attention to detail is so praiseworthy that one would have to bow down to Henry Selick in order to overstate how great the detail is.  Even the very idea of the film, with all of its characters and little gags, is pure genius.  In a way, I love this film.  The problem is that it gets very dull very fast.

The reason for this is that the film only has one note – or at least it holds the same note too long.  There are a few moments that stand out in the film as contributing something different to the film from its usual aesthetic: the scene in Christmas Town, the scene in which the toys attack the children on Christmas, and the scenes in which Santa is in the clutches of the Boogie Man.  All of these scenes are strong, and I like them a lot – the first is charming, the second is very Gremlins, and the third is very Tim Burton.  Apart from these, however, most of the film is just the same few feelings and motifs on repeat.

Some of this is due to the writing, and the actors might be partly to blame also, but this one mostly falls on Elfman.  “This Is Halloween” is a good, catchy song, but almost all the other songs run together and are nearly impossible to tell apart.  They all use the same few chords and are very limited in the emotions they express.  Consequently, the film feels like a broken record.  So I don’t think I could stand to watch this film every year, but since there’s clearly a lot to love hear, I’ll try to squeeze it in a couple times a decade.

Hanna Review

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This movie almost merits two different reviews – it just doesn’t feel like it’s all the same film.  It somehow simultaneously embodies my favorite and least-favorite movements in contemporary American cinema.

As for what bothers me: it’s trying too hard to be artsy.  It thinks it is an art film, even though it isn’t, and it has a pretentious “hipster” vibe.  It really thinks it’s hot stuff, much like The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, but at least that film did not commit this film’s greatest sin – too many jump-scares.  As I may have said before, the jump-scare is the filmic equivalent to the playground bully who claps in front of children’s faces and mocks them for blinking.  It’s pathetic.  Of course, to complete this irritating aesthetic, much of the film is very gray and bland, which I suppose I should expect from a 2011 film.

However – and now it’s time for the good stuff – there are also scenes with beautiful lighting and colors, which feel as though they belong in a classic Tim Burton film.  These moments are rare, but they are very, very lovely.  Even before this aesthetic change though, the biggest shift in tone is when the electronic music kicks in, which injects the film with life and makes me grin like the Grinch.  Every movie soundtrack should be a little bit more like this movie’s soundtrack – the score is simply divine.  It helps that the film is driven by great characters performed by great actors.  Saoirse Ronan’s transformation is downright uncanny (in a good way), and praise for this is due to both the makeup department and Ronan herself, who makes the viewer believe in and care for a very unusual character.  I like intriguing female protagonists and threatening female villains, so I found it easy to stay engaged in the story.

The film is worth watching (and, perhaps, watching again) because it was clearly crafted with care.  As much as I hate how much the film embodies the errors of its time period, director Joe Wright is doing so much here that is genuinely artistic, original, and clever that, had he simply strayed further from the path, I think he could have made an amazing film.  As it is, however, this hipster of a film does actually have much intelligence – a shocking amount for an action film – and its thoughtful, precise incision of fairy tale elements into the DNA of the story is admirable.  Maybe the film’s good and bad aspects can be reconciled if one sees this as a turning point – a sign that we are moving away from what contemporary films have been and towards a future filled with color, synthesizers, great characters, and very smart writing.  Here’s hoping.

White Christmas Review

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Some films are great entertainment, and others are high art, but some just need to serve a function.  This film is functional: it puts the spectator in a Christmas mood.  Using many of the tools and tricks of other classic musicals of its day, regurgitating old tropes, it makes the viewer want to watch it not for its own value, but because it is clearly the kind of film that ought to be on the TV set during the holidays.  It has the usual problems of musicals from the 1950s, most noticeably unnecessary musical numbers, and it has a heaping dose of the 1950s’ nostalgia for older times, even though those older days were far worse than the film’s own time.  Heck, if I have to watch one more classic movie that tries to romanticize minstrel shows, I might vomit.

Still, as one would expect, it has some amount of good music, good performances, and good visuals.  Danny Kaye demonstrates why he is an underrated legend of the silver screen, and the finale even grabbed my heartstrings a little.  At the end of the day though, the film isn’t trying too hard to be very good, and I hesitate to say it is good.  This was never anyone’s passion project.  It’s just fluff.  Fortunately, once the holidays roll around, I’m kind of in the mood for fluff.

Superbad Review

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At least the title is honest.

Every now and again, I watch a movie because my friend makes me, and this was that.  It’s just not my kind of thing – plain and simple.  I don’t care about these characters.  They annoy me.  They could be shot with lasers, sent back in time, elected president, probed by aliens, trained in martial arts by dinosaurs, shaven bald by a horny Mickey Mouse, abducted by a cult that worships Billy Mays, and/or eaten by the Lollipop Guild, and I would not care.  So why should I care about their less interesting lives?  And during those brief moments when I do care, the film is more painful than funny, triggering all my social anxieties and making me want to die.

The problem, unfortunately, is that it has too many redeeming qualities for me to dismiss it entirely.  The stupid police officers are amazingly rather funny at times, and Emma Stone absolutely steals the show.  Her performance near the end slays me.  Honestly, had the film been more about the girls, it would have been better by leaps and bounds.  That’s all it would take.

I’m rather confused about the presence of the 1970s.  Somehow, the film seems to take place in two decades at once, without explanation.  1970s music makes appearances in various forms – although the scene with the best use of older music features “These Eyes,” which is from the late 1960s – and there are ‘70s pop culture references on T-shirts throughout.  The opening, however, is the part that screams 1970s, and it is a brilliant opening credits sequence – one of the best I’ve ever seen.  It’s a shame the rest of the film couldn’t maintain that level of quality.

Delicatessen Review

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I think the first time I ever saw a scene from a French film was in one of my classes at Harford Community College.  The professor showed a brief clip in which residents of an apartment were all moving in unison to the rhythm of a couple having sex on a bed.  I never knew where it came from, but I would have liked to see the whole film since this scene struck me as both humorous very artistic.

I think the first time I ever saw a French film all the way through was when I watched Amélie.  Consequently, the stylistic choices of Jean-Pierre Jeunet formed my entire schema of what a French film was for a very long time – I think I assumed that his style was normal for French cinema because I didn’t realize the scene I had seen from Delicatessen was by the same director.  Now that I’ve seen many more French films, I can clearly see how Amélie and Delicatessen clearly belong in their own little corner doing their own little thing.

After a bit more consideration, however, what’s struck me is just how different the two films are.  Amélie, while it engages with the dark and gloomy, is extremely romantic, and Delicatessen, while it engages with romance, is extremely dark and gloomy.  Delicatessen takes pride in its repulsiveness, and for some strange reason, I appreciate that.  It’s a very icky movie, and I think it may have started a lot of bad trends in the filmmaking styles of the 1990s (bland color schemes, excessive fish-eye lenses, etc.), but it’s still clever, slick, and a well of creative inspiration.  Don’t make the same mistake I did – now that you know about it, see it sooner rather than later.