"A holiday movie? I haven't seen Elf!"
Jack was willing to watch again the sweet and slightly corny story of a tall man-child, raised by Santa and his elves, who locates his birth father in New York City. The big cast, led by Will Ferrell in the title role, with Bob Newhart, Ed Asner, James Caan, Mary Steenburgen, and Zooey Deschanel, to name a few, doesn't disappoint.
This was Jon Favreau's second outing as a director, this time working from a script by David Berenbaum.
The soundtrack by John Debney is available by subscription on Apple Music and for free on Spotify.
Ferrell was last blogged for Downhill (possibly the last movie we saw in a theatre before the lockdown), Asner for The Heart Specialist, Caan for New York, I Love You, Steenburgen for A Walk in the Woods, Deschanel for Rock the Kasbah, and Favreau was last blogged as a director for The Jungle Book. Newhart (91) is a comedian whose records we played in my childhood apartment and went on to star in, among others, two sitcoms bearing his name for a total of 326 episodes from 1972-1990. Search for him on google and you'll have many opportunities to hear his buttoned-down 60s humor. This is the first of five produced screenplays by Berenbaum but I've seen none of the others. His Frosty the Snowman movie is in pre-production.
Rotten Tomatoes' critics and audiences are fairly cheery, averaging 84 and 79%, respectively. We watched it on Hulu.
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