Arthur Christmas (2011)

Official trailer

Arthur Christmas is Sarah Smith’s 2011 British-American animated Christmas comedy from Aardman Animations depicting the modern operation of Santa’s high-tech global delivery system and the bumbling younger son Arthur Claus’s mission to deliver a single forgotten present before Christmas morning.

James McAvoy voices Arthur Claus. Hugh Laurie voices Steve Claus. Bill Nighy voices Grandsanta. Jim Broadbent voices Malcolm Claus (the current Santa). Imelda Staunton voices Margaret Claus (Mrs. Santa). Ramona Marquez voices Gwen. Peter Baynham and Sarah Smith wrote the screenplay.

Aardman Animations and Sony Pictures Animation produced the film for Columbia Pictures release in November 2011.

This is the Christmas movie I’d push on anyone who thinks they’re sick of Christmas movies. It’s quick, sly and warm without going gooey, and Nighy’s Grandsanta makes me laugh harder than anything else in the genre. It stops short of a 9 for me because the second half settles into a chase that’s more pleasant than inspired.

Aardman developed a procedural-comedy approach in Wallace and Gromit, and Arthur Christmas applies it to the question of how Santa’s contemporary global Christmas delivery would work. The North Pole is rendered as a vast underground military-industrial operation, the sleigh is a stealth ship the size of an airport with thousands of elves performing precise delivery work, and the operational tension between traditional methods (Grandsanta), high-tech efficiency (Steve), and personal warmth (Arthur) drives both the comedy and the emotional structure.

The film treats Santa-mythology engineering with the same loving attention that earlier Aardman productions brought to inventor-shed contraptions.

The Procedural Comedy Setup

The opening sequence of Santa’s Christmas Eve operation is the best procedural comic setup I can think of in modern animation.

The S-1 stealth sleigh hovers over each city while thousands of elves run coordinated quiet break-ins, with floor-plan analysis screens, delivery tracking dashboards and global logistics displays, and every element plays as impressive and funny at once. I grin all the way through it. It makes the film’s central comic argument.

The procedural framing allows the screenplay to introduce the central conflict efficiently. The single forgotten present that the operation has missed becomes a logistical problem that the operation can’t solve, because its efficiency depends on never deviating from optimized routes. The personal-warmth gap that Steve’s military operation has produced is the screenplay’s underlying critique of contemporary corporate efficiency.

The Three-Generation Santa Family

The screenplay’s central invention is the family-business framing of the Santa role. The current Santa Malcolm Claus is approaching retirement age. His older son Steve has reorganized the operation along military-industrial lines. His younger son Arthur runs the children’s-letter-reading department with no operational authority. The retired Grandsanta lives in the family compound complaining about how Christmas used to be done properly.

The three-generation family dynamic produces steady character comedy throughout. Steve’s resentment of his father’s continuing position, Arthur’s affectionate inability to compete with his brother, Grandsanta’s contempt for everything Steve has done to the operation, and Margaret’s exhausted management of all three men are set up early and kept consistent. I think Hugh Laurie’s Steve is the unsung part of this, because he makes a pompous efficiency expert sympathetic enough that I end up rooting for him a little.

Bill Nighy’s Grandsanta

Bill Nighy’s vocal performance as the retired Grandsanta is the film’s strongest single comic element. The character is bitter, vain, exaggerated about his past achievements, and entirely confident that his old methods were superior to everything Steve has implemented. Nighy delivers every line with the cadence of a man who knows he’s the funniest person in any room.

Grandsanta’s old reindeer-powered sleigh, which he kept after retiring, becomes Arthur’s transport for the single-present mission. Nighy’s complaints about Steve’s modern operation, his selective memory of past Christmas Eve disasters and his unjustified faith in steering by the stars carry the comedy. I love every line he grumbles, and I could listen to a whole film of him being wrong about everything.

Is Arthur Christmas worth watching?

My 8 goes to Arthur Christmas as the most underrated Christmas film of its era and a stronger film than its box office suggested. The Aardman instincts, the procedural opening, the family writing and Nighy’s Grandsanta all work.

What keeps it from climbing higher is a back half that runs on charm more than invention. I’d put it on anybody’s December list ahead of most of the big-studio competition.

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