The newest animated feature to come from Aardman, the Bristol studio famous for Wallace And Gromit, is Arthur Christmas, a contemporary Christmas family film full of humour and originality but keeping that warm and fuzzy festive feeling.
There comes an age where every child begins to question the theory of Santa and how he manages to fly around the whole world in one night, delivering presents to every little boy and girl. As it tuns out, Santa (Jim Broadbent) these days has become more of a 'face of Christmas' while actually an army of a million elves fly around on a specially designed spaceship delivering presents in groups of threes in precisely 18.14 seconds. Christmas has quite literally become a military operation, run proficiently by Santa's eldest son Steve (Hugh Laurie), who is next in line to become the new Father Christmas. The family of Claus's are a bit of a dysfunctional one, while Steve and Santa are quite happy with the modern advances, it's Arthur (James McAvoy), the youngest son who understands the true spirit of Christmas, despite his fear of snow, reindeer, heights and almost everything. When the North Pole's new technology fails and a child is missed from Santa's list, it's up to Arthur, his Grand-santa (Bill Nighy) and a ninja gift wrapping elf to save Christmas the traditional way.
The brilliant thing about Arthur Christmas is that it is genuinely funny and it doesn't seem to have been written with just children in mind. In doing so it has created interesting characters with a great odd ball sense of humour, who bare more than a passing resemblance to a Christmas version of the royal family. This is Aardman's biggest film to date, costing £75 million with the help of U.S funding. And it seems that the Americans have invested wisely as it is already getting rave reviews on the other side of the pond.
Arthur Christmas is a highly original festive movie with all the nostalgia of a Christmas classic.
5 Stars
Some other British Christmas films....
The Snowman (1982) Wordless (save for the song "Walking in the Air") animated adventure about a young English boy who makes a snowman one Christmas Eve, only for it to come to life that night and take him on a magical adventure to the North Pole to meet Santa Claus. A British Christmas classic from the year I was born. My biggest memory about this film was that the video version had an introduction by David Bowie, even at a young age I found this to be quite random.
Father Christmas (1991) After a hard night's work, Father Christmas decides to go on a "blooming vacation", builds his sledge into a caravan and holidays in France, Scotland and Las Vegas before coming home and settling down, with a bit of grumbling, to answer the mail, get the gifts ready, deliver them and get to the Snowmen's' party on time. Another animated childhood favourite. What I remember mostly about this is the fact Father Christmas says 'blooming' so many times. In fact he says blooming 72 times in 25 minutes.
The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe (1988) Four kids travel to the magical land of Narnia where they must battle an evil queen with the direction of the Lion, Aslan. Not really a Christmas film as in Narnia the White Witch has ruled that it always be winter and never Christmas, it's not really a film either rather a tv show. I suppose you could include the more recent The Chronicles of Narnia The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, which isn't quite the same for me but at least it was better than it's sequels.
Love Actually (2003) Follows the lives of eight very different couples in dealing with their love lives in various loosely and interrelated tales all set during a frantic month before Christmas in London. As much as I wanted to like this at the time, I found it quite difficult to get aboard this film with so many stories and not enough time devoted to any of them. But for some reason I have persevered and watched it most years it has been shown on tv. I'm not sure it has ever really made that much more of an impact, but the Christmas spirit in me may have won and I do think of it now with a little bit of nostalgia, or maybe I'm just getting old.
The Christmas Miracle Of Jonathan Toomey (2007) When a broken hearted boy loses the treasured wooden nativity set that links him to his dead father, his worried mother persuades a lonely ill-tempered woodcarver to create a replacement, and to allow her son to watch him work on it. I've not actually seen this but it looks lovely and is going straight to the top of my 'Christmas films to watch this year list'.
In Bruges (2008) London based hit men Ray and Ken are told by their boss Harry Waters to lay low in Bruges, Belgium for up to two weeks following their latest hit, which resulted in the death of an innocent bystander. While they wait for Harry's call, Ken, following Harry's advice, takes in the sights of the medieval city with great appreciation. But the charms of Bruges are lost on the simpler Ray. OK so not the most obvious choice but despite being set in Bruges it is a British film and it is set around Christmas-ish. It really does make me feel festive and want to visit Bruges. My mum however was not too impressed when I stuck the dvd on last Christmas day.
There aren't many British Christmas films that I am aware of, I'm sure there are many different versions of Scrooge and A Christmas Carol that I cannot really distinguish in my childhood Christmas memories and there is probably one or two more Richard Curtis films I could add, but I think Love Actually has that corner covered. At least Arthur Christmas will be will be a welcome addition to British Christmas film classics.