In an effort to shy away from the mainstays of Christmas movies for this marathon, I turned to Netflix to deliver a nice package of obscure holiday fun. What it delivered was quite possible the most painful movie I have ever experienced. Fuck you movie!
Elf Bowling is apparently based on a computer video game of the same name that I have never heard of. In the game, Santa is pissed at his unionized, striking elves and apparently uses them as bowling pins. Seeing 82 minutes of that would have been far more entertaining. In a bastardized retcon of the origin of THE jolly old fat man in a red suit, Santa transforms from the captain of the Stinky Toe into ol’ Saint Nick that we know him as after his crew stages a mutiny and pushes Santa and his brother Dingle Kringle overboard into the freezing ocean waters. After thawing, Santa enters into a contractual agreement with the native elves on the North Pole to deliver the toys made by the elves as long as working conditions are happy. Dingle is tired of being upstaged by his brother and concocts a scheme with a couple of penguins to remove Santa from power and relocate the toy-making operation to Fiji.
To be honest, if I wasn’t in a crunch for a Christmas movie today, I would have turned this shit off in the first ten minutes. For a CG-animated movie made just a few years ago, the animation was embarrassingly bad. Being that I had never even heard of this fucker before watching it, I wasn’t expecting Pixar-like animation or story telling. But this literally looks like someone managed to hack a Nintendo 64 to create the visuals that look and move like stop-motion props carved out of wood based on a story that a drunken father tells his children on Christmas Eve. I’m not even sure what demographic is being targeted as there are some jokes that are a bit too overtly lewd for a children’s movie but a story and characters so woefully undeveloped that I fathom kids would be the ones most likely to to tolerate it.
Between the sheer absurdity of the story, the mild, cartoonish physical violence, and the random musical numbers, this was either created by a bunch of guys who’ve either never seen a movie or conversely seen way too many as it is all over the place. And someone should have sent them a message that having a song and dance espousing the virtues of slavery or a dark skinned elf rapping about wrapping probably isn’t the most appropriate in a family film. But then again, no one else is going to seek out this trash other than me so why bother?
Elf Bowling is apparently based on a computer video game of the same name that I have never heard of. In the game, Santa is pissed at his unionized, striking elves and apparently uses them as bowling pins. Seeing 82 minutes of that would have been far more entertaining. In a bastardized retcon of the origin of THE jolly old fat man in a red suit, Santa transforms from the captain of the Stinky Toe into ol’ Saint Nick that we know him as after his crew stages a mutiny and pushes Santa and his brother Dingle Kringle overboard into the freezing ocean waters. After thawing, Santa enters into a contractual agreement with the native elves on the North Pole to deliver the toys made by the elves as long as working conditions are happy. Dingle is tired of being upstaged by his brother and concocts a scheme with a couple of penguins to remove Santa from power and relocate the toy-making operation to Fiji.
To be honest, if I wasn’t in a crunch for a Christmas movie today, I would have turned this shit off in the first ten minutes. For a CG-animated movie made just a few years ago, the animation was embarrassingly bad. Being that I had never even heard of this fucker before watching it, I wasn’t expecting Pixar-like animation or story telling. But this literally looks like someone managed to hack a Nintendo 64 to create the visuals that look and move like stop-motion props carved out of wood based on a story that a drunken father tells his children on Christmas Eve. I’m not even sure what demographic is being targeted as there are some jokes that are a bit too overtly lewd for a children’s movie but a story and characters so woefully undeveloped that I fathom kids would be the ones most likely to to tolerate it.
Between the sheer absurdity of the story, the mild, cartoonish physical violence, and the random musical numbers, this was either created by a bunch of guys who’ve either never seen a movie or conversely seen way too many as it is all over the place. And someone should have sent them a message that having a song and dance espousing the virtues of slavery or a dark skinned elf rapping about wrapping probably isn’t the most appropriate in a family film. But then again, no one else is going to seek out this trash other than me so why bother?
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