There are two types of movies that are particularly hard to judge at this strange juncture in cinema: animated films and Christmas movies. The former is not, really, due to a lack of offerings in the medium but more the fact that Pixar has dominated the genre for much of the last two decades; save for the occasional burst of brilliance from Dreamworks (How to Train Your Dragon), the studio's supremacy in this area has rarely been in dispute, so everything else tends to pale in comparison. Even this summer's woebegotten Cars 2 had more originality than a good chunk of the latter three Shrek movies. Christmas movies, meanwhile, generally are what they are, which is to say mildly amusing seasonal escapism with no real purpose or function outside the winter months, originally guaranteed heart-warmers, they've become more formulaic by the year and critics have generally treated as such, rendered cold by the skepticism of a skeptical age. (Case in point: they're usually released on DVD a full year after their theatrical run to coincide with the next year's holiday season. Ho ho ho, meet sell sell sell.)
In any case, the rarely-heard-from Sony Pictures Animation is throwing their own horse into both races, a 3D-enhanced, Bieber-cosigned (the music video for his Jackson Five-interpolating cover of "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town" precedes each screening, in full 3D no less) holiday jaunt called Arthur Christmas that's hardly a home run on either front, but with an impressively invested voice cast and a genuine heart at its center, it will certainly qualify as a high-pop double. The film is hardly memorable for any of its plot points (except for a genuinely touching ending, but more on that later) but it is infectiously genuine. For all its 2011 bells and whistles, it seems to have come from an earlier, more innocent era of filmmaking when audiences were not yet so jaded; it's heavy-handed at best yet so completely invested in the candy-coated shtick it's selling you can't help but get swept up in its better moments.
The film borrows its wildly amusing premise from the notion that, yes Virginia, Santa Claus (voice of Jim Broadbent) exists, his name is actually Malcolm, and he's got a bustling, Modern Family-style brood to call his very own. Our Arthur Christmas (James McAvoy) is his youngest son, a clodhopping goofball in an itchy-looking sweater and slippers that beep and boop Yuletide carols with every step. Designated responder for all of Santa's fan mail, Arthur is this film's embodiment of the Christmas mythos as applied to young kids; all he wants is for everyone to get a present and believe that Santa loves them enough to have paid them an honest-to-gosh visit. The character himself doesn't really have much to do besides recite the usual Christmas message, but McAvoy's delivery of each line at a high-pitched squeal, as if Arthur is waking up every day on, well, Christmas morning, is as infectious to experience as it is irritating to have described to you. If you have to be force-fed a heap of Yuletide mush, you want it to be from a guy like this.
On the opposite end of the spectrum is Santa's eldest son and heir to the big guy's mantle, an enterprising meathead named Steve (Hugh Laurie) who has streamlined Christmas night into a full-scale, military-style operation complete with a giant, sleigh-shaped spaceship and an army of elves (hilarious, every one of them) who deliver presents and slip into houses in the same manner as Tom Cruise tends to infiltrate evil foreigners in the Mission: Impossible movies. If Arthur is the Miracle on 34th Street version of Christmas, all wide-eyed and wonder, Steve is its Jingle All the Way, focusing his attentions on the bells and whistles of the holiday season and not so much on the soul. At one point, he purports to give a child an upgraded version of the toy they had originally asked for. "Bigger, ergo, better," he chips in Laurie's impeccable British accent.
