Arthur Christmas (2011)

Arthur Christmas is a pretty alright animation.  I had not intended on watching this in advance but it seemed like my brain after 8 hours straight in a plane really couldn’t watch anything else.  I had started then left 15 minutes into the movie Seeking a Friend For The End of the World.  It just wasn’t doing much for me.  So I figured maybe a Christmas movie would do the job. I actually enjoyed it quite a bit.

The plot is quite straightforward. Arthur(James McAvoy) is the son of the current Santa(Jim Broadbent) and he is clumsy and dysfunctional most of the time so he is just responsible of  replying to Santa’s  mail.  He also has the Christmas spirit that most of the family seems to have lost.  He just simply praises what his father does.  On the other hand, Steve (Hugh Laurie)is Santa’s other son and he is very competent as he has now upgraded the Santa mission into a modernized way with the help of technology and space ship and the elves are all there to help make the mission flow smoothly.  It’s pretty impressive how they set it up.  What causes problems is when one of the elves realize that one of the gifts was not delivered but Steve and Santa both don’t feel the need to do it and if anything, would do it later. However, Arthur disagrees and with through help of grandsanta(Bill Nighy), Arthur’s grandfather, they run through the night filled with obstacles to try to get the gift to the leftout child.

This one is a fun adventure. The first half was a bit slow and generic but the second half was fun.  On top of that, the voices for the characters are amazing. I have never heard any of them do voice over in animation but have huge respect for Bill Nighy and Jim Broadbent.  These are decent actors to get to do this, so the movie has a good foundation.  James McAvoy in my book is pretty cool as well. I”ve seen him in Atonement and more dramatic movies, but as a teenage comedic boy, I’d say it was a good change.

I’m not sure it’ll be my top 10 of Christmas movies but I really liked it in the second half.  Generally, I like most Christmas movies, so already this one won some points before it started.  The main turnoff is the fact that Justin Beiber sang the theme song and I really don’t have much love for it, so I just skipped the credits. Problem solved!

All in all this is a modernized Christmas movie which reminds us that Christmas spirit doesn’t change and shouldn’t change with time. It’s like in the part where they all want to be Santa. Grandsanta wants to prove that being Santa the old way was the way it’s supposed to be, current Santa is just tired and enjoying the glory and praise, Steve wants to be the next in line and take over his father and not just be behind the scenes taking care of operations. They all want their own and goal but no one really kept the spirit that Christmas and beliefs need to be kept that no child is left out on Santa’s list. I’m paraphrasing Arthur here but he says, it doesn’t matter how it gets there, what matters is that it gets there in time.

It’s a nice animation and tis full of talented voices and a really good plot. Of  course it cant compete with all through Christmas classics out there, but it certainly does alright overall. I would definitely stop on the channel to rematch if it was on TV.

I haven’t heard much about this movie before seeing it on the plane. Has anyone seen it? Did you like it?