Set at the North Pole, Arthur Christmas is a digital 3-D holiday adventure delving into themes of futility, alienation and madness.
This grim 97-minute character exploration revolves around the bumbling, failed son of Santa Claus.
In a desperate grab for attention, he takes a sleigh ride with an ex-Santa grandfather who remains trapped in a past of eggnog, candy canes and the feral scent of sweaty reindeer.
In addition, they are joined by an elf whose mania for perfect gift-wrapping conceals deep-seated insecurities and an inability to connect with anything other than parcels.
High above the Earth, the trio journeys on a forlorn Christmas Eve mission that ruthlessly unmasks them the way a chubby child tears open gift boxes in quest of fruit cake and kitchen magnets.
Essentially a remake of Clouzot’s 1953 The Wages of Fear ( Le Salaire de la peur) this trip to deliver a present to a young English girl commences in the frozen Arctic. Director (and co-writer) Sarah Smith’s able metaphor serves as background for the famous, successful Kringle family. Isolated from the world and each other by resentment and lunacy, their lives are a living vice, squeezed by an unyielding Christmas deadline that looms above them all like a thundercloud filled with iron hippos.
Arthur (voiced by James McAvoy) is the younger son of the current Santa Claus. But he is no jolly heir apparent. A kind-hearted fumbler, Arthur’s inability to tell dung from dungarees has him answering children’s letters to his father. Super-efficient brother Steve (Hugh Laurie) runs the annual toy delivery operation with a military crispness and a bureaucratic indifference to the individual. In addition, the family includes elderly Grandsanta (Bill Nighy) who desperately clings to his chimney-filled past like a dockside tart clutching a drunken sailor.
Instead of nitroglycerin to a burning oil field, Arthur and Grandsanta seek to deliver a bicycle to a girl whose gift fell through the cracks of Steve’s Christmas machine. Traveling in a sleigh with reindeer, they are accompanied by Byrony the elf (Ashley Jensen). Perhaps the most complex character, Byrony seeks out humans but cannot bond with them. She screens her emptiness by obsessing on brightly wrapped gifts. But nothing can bind her unraveling psyche. We sense Byrony would like to hurl herself from the sleigh, ending it all in a screaming plunge through the clouds. But the filmmakers ignored this potential Oscar candy.
Despite its psychological depth, ‘Arthur’ is slow-paced and ponderous with minimal dialogue. Plus every poignant moment is undermined by the medium. Why CGI? This story should have been filmed in the starkest black and white, underscored by a single oboe. Instead we’re fed musical flan by Justin Bieber and pastel computer colors to render a tale of fate and impending death. The clash between medium and message left me wanting to vomit tent pegs.
I only can give two stars out of five to this morose picture. Despite many good features, the movie’s failure to chose a proper medium stings smartly. This could’ve been an important film. Instead it turned into something—what I can’t say—suited only for children and families.
Opens Nov. 23, missing Christmas by a wide margin. The holiday is still a month away!
Aardman/Sony Pictures clearly know nothing about marketing.
Set at the North Pole, Arthur Christmas is a digital 3-D holiday adventure delving into themes of futility, alienation and madness.
This grim 97-minute character exploration revolves around the bumbling, failed son of Santa Claus.
In a desperate grab for attention, he takes a sleigh ride with an ex-Santa grandfather who remains trapped in a past of eggnog, candy canes and the feral scent of sweaty reindeer.
In addition, they are joined by an elf whose mania for perfect gift-wrapping conceals deep-seated insecurities and an inability to connect with anything other than parcels.
High above the Earth, the trio journeys on a forlorn Christmas Eve mission that ruthlessly unmasks them the way a chubby child tears open gift boxes in quest of fruit cake and kitchen magnets.
Essentially a remake of Clouzot’s 1953 The Wages of Fear ( Le Salaire de la peur) this trip to deliver a present to a young English girl commences in the frozen Arctic. Director (and co-writer) Sarah Smith’s able metaphor serves as background for the famous, successful Kringle family. Isolated from the world and each other by resentment and lunacy, their lives are a living vice, squeezed by an unyielding Christmas deadline that looms above them all like a thundercloud filled with iron hippos.
Arthur (voiced by James McAvoy) is the younger son of the current Santa Claus. But he is no jolly heir apparent. A kind-hearted fumbler, Arthur’s inability to tell dung from dungarees has him answering children’s letters to his father. Super-efficient brother Steve (Hugh Laurie) runs the annual toy delivery operation with a military crispness and a bureaucratic indifference to the individual. In addition, the family includes elderly Grandsanta (Bill Nighy) who desperately clings to his chimney-filled past like a dockside tart clutching a drunken sailor.
Instead of nitroglycerin to a burning oil field, Arthur and Grandsanta seek to deliver a bicycle to a girl whose gift fell through the cracks of Steve’s Christmas machine. Traveling in a sleigh with reindeer, they are accompanied by Byrony the elf (Ashley Jensen). Perhaps the most complex character, Byrony seeks out humans but cannot bond with them. She screens her emptiness by obsessing on brightly wrapped gifts. But nothing can bind her unraveling psyche. We sense Byrony would like to hurl herself from the sleigh, ending it all in a screaming plunge through the clouds. But the filmmakers ignored this potential Oscar candy.
Despite its psychological depth, ‘Arthur’ is slow-paced and ponderous with minimal dialogue. Plus every poignant moment is undermined by the medium. Why CGI? This story should have been filmed in the starkest black and white, underscored by a single oboe. Instead we’re fed musical flan by Justin Bieber and pastel computer colors to render a tale of fate and impending death. The clash between medium and message left me wanting to vomit tent pegs.
I only can give two stars out of five to this morose picture. Despite many good features, the movie’s failure to chose a proper medium stings smartly. This could’ve been an important film. Instead it turned into something—what I can’t say—suited only for children and families.
Opens Nov. 23, missing Christmas by a wide margin. The holiday is still a month away!
Aardman/Sony Pictures clearly know nothing about marketing.
