Freaktana
A Major Disappointment
ActuallyGlimmer
The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.
Tyreece Hulme
One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.
TheLittleSongbird
While it is not one of my favourite films, festive or not, 'Elf' is nonetheless an entertaining and charming film and one of Will Ferrell's better films. Being someone who also loves musicals and Christmas, part of me was looking forward somewhat to 'Elf: Buddy's Musical Christmas'.My thoughts on it are that it is not quite as bad as has been made out here, but it doesn't really live up to 'Elf' and promises more than it delivers. There are far worse Christmas specials, 'Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer', 'Star Wars Holiday Special' and particularly 'The Christmas Tree' are far worse and notoriously so. There are also far better, strong examples being the best of Rankin/Bass like 'Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer', 'Frosty the Snowman' and 'Santa Claus is Coming to Town'.Starting with the positives, the animation is very well done, with lots of colour and detail and also liked the attention to expressions. Also thought the voice acting was very good, Ed Asner especially is spot on as Santa. Jim Parsons likewise is a spirited Buddy and Gilbert Gottfried has fun with his character, though he doesn't quite overcome the tendency to go overboard. The opening song number is catchy, starting 'Elf: Buddy's Musical Christmas' on a promising note, while the music score is playful enough.However, too many things work against 'Elf: Buddy's Musical Christmas'. The rest of the songs are unmemorable, a few even downright irritating and add far less than they should do, actually they could have been excised and nobody would miss a thing. While the voice acting is fine generally Mark Hamill has definitely done far better work than here.'Elf: Buddy's Musical Christmas' doesn't fare very well in the story department. It lacks the warmth and heart of 'Elf', and lacks even more in charm. It treads far too much familiar ground and further suffers from being twice as long as it should have been, seeing as the story felt very stretched and padded out by the musical numbers. This affects the momentum of the second half where it runs out of steam. Dialogue is corny rather than witty and veers on the saccharine, while the already tired gags go beyond breaking point and the message starts contradictory (missing the point of what 'Elf' was all about) and then is lost amidst everything else. Overall, lacklustre but not without its merits. 4/10 Bethany Cox
Prismark10
This cynical cash in animation short basically retells the story of Elf, the Will Ferrell film without any of the charm and many of the cast from the original film.Ed Asner does reprise his role to voice Santa who tells the grown up Buddy who thinks he is an Elf in the North Pole that he is actually human who stowed away in Santa's bag as a baby.His real dad is Walter Hobbs living in New York who has been on the naughty list for years.Buddy travels to see his father who works at a publishing company with a horrid boss. Walter is taken aback at first to see this grown up infant but Buddy's relentless cheer transforms him and when Santa comes to deliver presents the curmudgeonly Walter gets the festive fever.Because this is labelled as a musical we have to put up with some mind numbingly dull songs. Even the animation is not much to shout home about.It would be just be better to put the Ferrell film on.
Horst in Translation (filmreviews@web.de)
Let me start this review by saying that i am not familiar with the Will Ferrell movie, so I cannot say which is better and which is worse. However, I did not really like this 45 minute special from last Christmas. The voice cast has some pretty big names, including multiple Emmy Award winner Jim Parsons as the lead character. He unites with his former "Big Bang Theory" co star Kate Micucci. The whole premise is about an elf getting his dad off the naughty list. As you probably already guessed from the title, there are quite a few musical numbers in here, but none of these really wowed me. The last one sung by the female main character was solid, the rest fairly forgettable.All in all, this movie had no less than a total of 6 pretty experienced writers and directors and taking this into account it is a fairly disappointing result. The animation isn't great either. There are parts of it which are downright bad, like the mouth of the villain. The topics such as the elf falling in love or relationship with his dad offered room for nice emotion, but it fell short in this area too. And the ending with all the people from the naughty list suddenly showing up was strange too. Fairly forgettable Christmas special here, really only for small children.
SnoopyStyle
Christmastown in the North Pole is a really happy place. Buddy is the happiest one of them all and really really accident prone. Santa tells him that he is actually human who stowaway in Santa's bag as an orphan baby. His father is Walter Hobbs living in NYC who's been on the naughty list for over 50 years. He travels to see his father who works at Greenway Publishing. He's thrown out of his father's office. Then he meets and falls for Jovie who's ringing the donation bell on the street.The first song is funny. I hoped that the special would continue like that but it never gets back to that level. Jim Parsons is a great cartoon voice but completely different than Will Ferrell. He sounds a bit like Jack McBrayer. Buddy keeps the show rolling. However the other songs aren't that much fun or catchy. They sound like the usual Broadway fare. The animation looks charming. They do change a few things from the movie. I wish the changes could have made the second half better.
