Arthur Christmas

We take our seats for Arthur Christmas, an Aardman production, which turns out to be informative stuff. It appears that the title ‘Santa Claus’ is actually a sort of hereditary peerage handed down from father to son. The current incumbent of the title is Malcolm Christmas (Jim Broadbent) who was passed the title from his father, the now retired Grand Santa (Bill Nighy). Malcolm is expected to retire this year to hand over the ‘reigns’ (ha ha ha) to his eldest Steve (Hugh Laurie). Steve is the smart arse currently in charge of the North Pole Command Centre that tracks the Santa ‘project’ across the world. Meanwhile his younger son Arthur (James McAvoy) can only look on in wonder, from the post room to where he has been banished, as he's accident waiting to happen.

Christmas night is now a high-tech military operation involving thousands of elves and a giant spaceship in order to get millions of presents delivered in one night. Now it all makes sense at last.

This year’s operation at first appears to be a great success and much to Steve’s annoyance, with Mrs. Santa (Imelda Staunton) by his side, Malcolm postpones his retirement. All though is not as it appears, one child has been missed and their present, a new bike, remains undelivered.

Steve refuses to attempt to deliver the missing gift being more than happy to accept that one minor blip has occurred in his operation, one present out of millions, not a bad ratio. So it is left to Arthur and Grand Santa, assisted by Bryony (Ashley Jensen), the elf from the Wrapping Department, to go on a renegade delivery mission using the olden day methods of sleigh and reindeers (albeit ones on drugs, they snort magic fumes to power them through the sky). All to ensure that one little girl is not the child Santa forgot.

The idea behind the film is original, fun and very creative, at first. The film loses its way badly in the middle third of the film where too much mayhem ensues as our ‘heroes’ get repeatedly lost and into many sticky situations. It cheapens a great idea and feels extraneous.

Eventually, perhaps half an hour too late, we meander our way to the expected heart warming finale that eventually just about saves the film. Good stuff but should have been better.