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Films about Santa are seemingly two a penny. Over the years he has had to fight Martians, defeat a demon named Pitch, even suffered the indignity of being played by Hulk Hogan (well, sort of). Get it right and you have The Nightmare Before Christmas, something that geniunly seems to add to the whole mythos; get it wrong though and you have Santa Claus 3. This year sees Father Christmas nicely animated in CGI by Aardam, the people who made Wallace and Gromit, and voiced by Jim Broadbent. So from the outset things are looking up.
Surprisingly Arthur Christmas does actually manage to take the character in a relatively new direction. The whole enterprise of Christmas is a family affair with the title of Santa passed from father to son, so that the film features three generations in the industry. There's the old, curmudgeonly Grandsanta (Billy Nighy), his son the current Santa, and his children Steve, the air apparent (Hugh Laurie), and the very well meaning but extremely accident prone and titular Arthur (James McCavoy). It also has Santa using sci-fi technology, including a Close Encounters style spaceship rather than the old sleigh, and operations are conducted by the elves as if it were Mission: Impossible, all of which works very well. The animation too is very good, whilst the voice cast is excellent throughout and deliver many genuinely good laughs with Aardam's traditional British sense of humour. So overall, everything in the film to this point seems to be going very well.
The problem is that the originality in the film ends when we reach the main premise. Simply put, the plot involves a missed present that leaves Arthur, Grandsanta and wrapping-obsessed Elf Bryony (Ashley Jensen) to save the day by delivering it, inevitably causing all kinds of mayhem. What's worse is they seem to have struggled to find enough material, leading to several bits that feel more like filler than part of the narrative including a rather bizarre UFO sub plot that seems completely out of place. The trouble seems to be that though they have these nice concepts of the elves delivering presents with precise stealth missions, the characters are good and the Santa family proves a good new take on the idea, everything appears to have just been clumsily connected with a story and some comedic scenes.
Yet that does not mean that the film is bad at all, it is just that that details of the script the history of the family business and its new high-tech workings complete with mission control are the best thing about the movie, rather than the main story ark. Yet these details are easily good and interesting enough to keep the audience entertained, so that though this is a flawed piece of work it is rather entertaining and very good-natured. I would also add that it should put you in the right Christmas spirit, were it not released in November, which just seems a little early for that frame of mind; but that's not the film's fault.
See Arthur Christmas at York's Reel Cinema. For more information visit http://york.reelcinemas.co.uk/
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