Flak Magazine: Review of Elf, 11.14.03

One of the most common narratives in recent movies is the juvenile regression of hyper-materialistic baby boomers embracing their hippie, hell-raising roots. Settled surburban life has turned boomers into uptight squares, man, a coma that can be broken only by recapturing those old symbols of youth rebellion. In movie terms, Ordinary People just have to get a little Dazed and Confused.

But now Generation X's infiltration into moviemaking has altered the formula. Gen X never dealt with the turmoil of anything as weighty as Vietnam or Watergate, and so lacks the character wrought by resistance and rebellion. VH-1's "I Love the '80s" documents the synthesizer nature of Gen X's bubblegum-pop childhood, and what should have been the maturation years of the '90s were, instead, defined by the blissful Super Bubble tech economy. Unlike their boomer counterparts, Gen Xers have not regressed; they've yet to have to grow up. The disillusionment of the post-bubble economy and vagueness of the war on terrorism has infected the 20- to 30-something soul, manifested in a cultural sluggishness as they struggle to find meaning in a society in which, as Newsweek puts it, "the conveyor belt that transported adolescents into adulthood has broken down." It's the same nebulous sense that neutered programmers latched onto with The Matrix, the same emasculation that Nick Hornby captures in his novels. This sense of helplessness is more than just generational gelding or spiritual emptiness; Generation X is increasingly moving back home, more reluctant than previous generations to leave the womb — becoming what Newsweek dubbed "adultolescents."

Will Ferrell is establishing himself as the comic embodiment of this generational confusion. In Old School, his Frank the Tank embodied the regression from the covenant of marriage to the fraternal bond, then Buddy, Ferrell's character in Elf, is an absurdist's symbol of the Gen X adultolescent. Here's the setup: Buddy's dad, now a jaded CEO of a children's books publisher, was once an amiable, free-loving young man. By a bizarre set of circumstances, his relationship with a lovely hippie chick went bad, leaving poor Buddy to be raised not by Bohemians in a commune, but by elves at the North Pole. Buddy outgrows the big gray factory that is Santa's toy shop, and now he's out to win the affection of a parent who has emotionally insulated himself from the world. Presumably, Buddy's dad (James Caan), still jilted and cynical from his '60s heartbreak, has buried himself in the sterilized corporate culture so that he doesn't have to confront his real emotions. In short, Buddy is man-child naïveté filtered through Christmas spirit.

This might seem like a stretch, but director Jon Favreau's design indicates deeper intentions, like his Altman-esque insistence on draping American flags across backdrops of Manhattan capitalism. Favreau's vision of the North Pole is gray shacks under an overcast sky, a heavily bureaucratic world that resembles Office Space's Initech more than a Seussian playhouse. Buddy's adoptive father, played by Bob Newhart in full elf regalia, explains the social milieu of the elf world as he helps Buddy cope with the frustration of reaching his quotas; the elves are less whistle-while-you-work cartoons than cubicle gnomes. Santa (Ed Asner, no stranger to managing a bureaucracy in tight quarters) declares an "energy crisis" because Christmas spirit is down; Santa's workshop is "fueled by the Christmas spirit," making it like a foreign sweatshop in that "Christmas Spirit" is measured more by the consumer confidence index than the intrinsic satisfaction of giving.

Buddy, of course, yearns for something more. The workshop life crushes his soul, so he does what any confused and disillusioned provincial would: make a blind go of it in New York City. After traversing the Candy Cane Forest, he lands in Manhattan, finds his father and, through his childlike innocence, teaches everyone about what's important in life. But this familiar, perfunctory holiday movie motive doesn't have the usual gloss here.

Gen X post-irony comedy has become a celebration of hipper-than-thou Cusackian detachment, often devoid of meaning because it's often devoid of feeling. With Elf, Ferrell creates a surrealist counterpoint to this detachment. Ferrell's Buddy isn't detached from anything; he's engaged in the world around him, but lacks the life experience to see it in real terms. Favreau's movie posits Buddy not as an idealist resisting the big bad world, but as a man-child who cannot tell the difference between childhood and adulthood. He just wants to see Santa again and be loved by his dad, and not even the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse (envisioned by Favreau as the Central Park Patrol) can deter him. The scene that embodies Favreau and Ferrell's idea of Elf involves Buddy's dad taking him to work. The secretary tells Buddy that he "looks nice," to which Buddy replies, with dewy-eyed excitement, "I know, Daddy told me big boys wear work clothes to work." The line could be spoken by any number of adultolescent ex-frat boys who found college to be little more than a four-year vacation from home. The cluelessness in his expression is so nescient that it's something close to profound.

The movie doesn't come off as cynical because Ferrell is smart enough not to wink at the camera to say, "Can you believe I'm wearing the giant elf suit?" Rather, Ferrell is Buddy the Elf. Ferrell's manic persona fuels the humor (like when he screams "You sit on a throne of lies!" at a department store Santa, or when he freaks out on a jack-in-the-box), but he separates himself from other comic actors because he manages to be as sincere about belching as he is about true love. Ferrell reaches deeper because he's willing to be emotionally vulnerable. In Old School, Frank the Tank meant it when he shouted "You're my boy, Blue!" as a memorial at a friend's funeral, and he shed real tears when his wife asked for a divorce. Elf may be an archetypal fish-out-of-water tale, but Ferrell's wide-eyed, glistening ingenuousness shows through with such conviction that he's impossible to resist. Buddy's enthusiasm, like the Tank's, is endearing and contagious, and we feel for him because his completely genuine energy has no channel in the cynical urban world. The tragic edge of both Buddy and Frank the Tank is that they overflow with love and enthusiasm, but they have no outlet for it — especially not unfeeling wives, families and corporations.

Ferrell understands this persona very well. Old School will become an icon of Gen X humor on the strength of a single brilliant scene: Ferrell, embarrassed by his admission that he's going to spend Saturday at Bed Bath & Beyond, chooses to bong a beer in a sort of rebellion. We cheer for the sheer joy on his face as he tells the college kids, "It tastes so good when it hits the lips!" because we know he's going to cast off the shackles of his dull middle-class existence — but we also sense the eventual tragedy that comes with this indulgence in the past. This is different, and better, than pure caricature — there's a deep sadness in his lack of sophistication because the masquerade of adulthood (the antiquing, the extravagant wedding) seems so familiar, creating a layer of depth and feeling that the outlandish scenarios of Billy Madison or The Waterboy can't accomodate.

The difference between Ferrell's adultolescents and Adam Sandler's is that Ferrell's are vulnerable and naked to the world, like the streaking Frank the Tank, or the lost soul Buddy the Elf, adrift in the capitalist trappings of Manhattan. Sandler's man-boys don't generate the same depth of feeling because he insists on the defense mechanism of beating people up with golf clubs and the like. Sandler shields Billy Madison and Happy Gilmore from true, profound dorkiness, detaching the characters from their inner turmoil. His movies are disturbingly puerile exercises in Gen X low humor. Ferrell's physical humor, in contrast, is striking a nerve with young moviegoers (to the tune of Elf's $30 million opening weekend in the face of The Matrix Revolutions) — because he's funny, sure, but like most good comedy, the humor is a vehicle to underlying emotions. If anything, Elf is an early Christmas present for those who have begged Santa every year for a gift to replace Adam Sandler.

— Stephen Himes (stephenhimes@hotmail.com)