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Sugar, Cheer, and Corporate Trauma – Elf (2003)

This week on Bad Dads Film Review, we crack open a modern Christmas classic and ask the hard questions: how much maple syrup is too much maple syrup, and is Christmas cheer a viable alternative energy source?

Our main feature is Elf (dir. Jon Favreau), the 2003 festive juggernaut that turned Will Ferrell into a full-blown Christmas institution. Ferrell plays Buddy, a human accidentally raised as an elf at the North Pole, who travels to New York to find his real father – a joyless publishing exec played with peak deadpan misery by James Caan.

We get into:

• Why Elf works when so many studio Christmas comedies don’t
• Ferrell’s perfectly calibrated performance: total sincerity, zero cynicism
• The fish-out-of-water chaos of Buddy vs New York (elevators, taxis, raccoons)
• Corporate burnout, absent fathers, and why this is secretly a film about emotional illiteracy
• Zooey Deschanel’s Jovie as the anti-manic-pixie manic pixie
• Peter Dinklage’s Miles Finch: tiny man, nuclear rage
• Forced perspective, stop-motion throwbacks, and Bob Newhart quietly holding the whole thing together

We also talk Elf on the Shelf fatigue, Christmas parenting arms races, and why forgetting to move a plastic elf at 6am is more stressful than most full-time jobs.

Yes, the ending leans hard into mass sing-along cheer-powered magic. Yes, it’s shameless. But Elf earns it by committing fully to warmth, kindness, and the radical idea that being nice to people might actually matter.

A rare Christmas movie that works for kids, parents, and deeply cynical adults who swear they “hate festive films” but somehow still quote this one every December.

Strong recommend.

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Bad Dads