Anyone seen Elf again recently? I have, and although I came late to the party, some years after its 2003 release, it’s a Christmas staple in our house. It’s just a joy to watch, with great performances from Will Ferrell as Buddy the human-who-thinks-he’s-an-elf, and a strong supporting cast including James Caan and Zooey Deschanel (great comedic actress later to star in American sitcom New Girl). It’s just a charming, silly family film but a sublimely-made charming, silly family film. The director was Jon Favreau, who is known for films as diverse as romcom, musical drama, adventure and sci-fi, and including several of the Marvel Studios movies.
The first script for Elf was written way back in 1993 by American screenwriter David Berenbaum, with Jim Carrey in mind to play Buddy. However, as the project took years to get off the ground, Carrey went on instead to produce that other festive favourite in 2000’s How The Grinch Stole Christmas, and Will Farrell joined the project instead. If you haven’t seen it, it’s about a human baby, inadvertently brought back to the North Pole in Santa’s sack, who is brought up as an elf, and who later tracks down his biological father in New York. As an “innocent abroad”, there is none so innocent as this.
While you might assume that a lot of computer trickery was employed to make Will Ferrell look bigger than his fellow actors in the North Pole, Jon Favreau favoured camera techniques and trickery to create the illusion. He used the concept of “forced perspective”, along with the building of two sets, one smaller than the other, with one raised closer and smaller and one bigger and further away. With the two sets measured and lined up, the director could have one person on one set appear to be much larger than a person on the other set. The only CGI in the film was some snowing.
The scene with Peter Dinklage is riotously funny, and is best viewed without food or drink in your mouth. The scene is set in the boardroom of the children’s book publishing house that Buddy’s father works for, under pressure to come up with the next best-seller. Dinklage plays a paid external children’s book wunderkind come to bail out the company with his great ideas. Dinklage’s character, like Dinklage himself, has dwarfism and the juxtaposition of innocence and offence that ensues, when Buddy enters the room and thinks he is seeing an actual elf, is brilliant. For the viewing audience it is a case of seeing both sides…and it’s very, very funny, so Merry Christmas!
