Of the three family friendly movies that opened on Thanksgiving weekend, this one is by far the weakest. That’s not necessarily as bad as it sounds (I would take this movie over Jack and Jill and Twilight any day) but it’s still not a good thing either.
What Works: The whole idea of a technologically driven Christmas (for example, Santa’s sleigh has been replaced by a giant state of the art spaceship) is clever…for about fifteen minutes. Also, Hugh Laurie turns in some nice voice work as Steve Claus, the competent older brother to Arthur who keeps Christmas running on time and is patiently waiting to become Santa once their dad steps down.
What Doesn’t Work: Well, as I said above, the initial plot really works for about 15 minutes, until your realize that’s all there is to the entire movie. Even the film’s core conflict (Arthur bending heaven and hell to try and get a girl her bicycle on Christmas morning instead of a few days later) is very thin for an entire movie. It felt like low dramatic stakes from the get-go and I actually started to feel sorry for Steve Claus when everyone gangs up on him for being against Arthur’s asinine and dangerous mission…you wind up thinking he’s right. After being touched by such low-key wonders as The Muppets and Hugo, Arthur Christmas felt like everything that’s become so stale with movies aimed at kids: there’s no real villain, no real stakes, and everything is busy, busy, busy, all flash and no soul.
What I Would Have Done Differently: Made a docudrama about the elf that blew the lid off Santa’s violations of child labor laws and also discovered elves who try to unionize are brutally murdered in flimsy toy-shop “accidents.” At least if you saw that movie, you could honestly say you were watching something different, instead of something pretending to be.