Movie review - "Elf" (2003) ***1/2

Walt Disney once remarked that the surest way to go broke (and he would know) would be to make films just for children.
Comparing this with a later Will Ferrell "kid's" film, Kicking and Screaming, it would seem to best way to make kids movies for adults as well is to do something a bit fantastical, as opposed to naturalistic - the big popular successes nowadays seem to be cartoons or fantasies. This enables the filmmakers to go off on weird and wonderful tangents, especially useful when you've got a star who excels in portraying madness.
This has a high concept - human raised by elves goes to find his father - and could have done with a bit more old fashioned narrative drive, i.e. a ticking clock or something - it sort of ambles along from one encounter to another. The calculation and machinery is too obvious and not skillful enough on the let's-sing-along finale; and the bit where they're all pitching ideas for kids books is a bit too hey-we're-filmmakers-this-is-all-we-know-about-real-life-so-let's-make-the-film-about-that (and is that how the kid book industry works?).
I normally like James Caan in drama and admit he's the right age and type of hair (i.e. curly) to be Ferrell's estranged dad, but he doesn't quite work here - he's maybe a bit too a method actor to do comedy, i.e. all passions and hesitations.
But it's a sweet film, with a lovely heart and full of moments of brilliance, mostly from everything Ferrell does -quizzical expressions, his enthusiasms, sly humour.
Many wonderful scenes which make you laugh out loud, like taking out the final kid in the snow ball fight (surely a Magnificent Seven homage), Ferrell testing the toys, the attack of the Central Park Rangers, Ferrell's comment about a dwarf being a "South Pole elf" (a concept strong enough to support a sequel).
The supporting actors really get the tone right, more so than Caan - Ed Asner, Bob Newheart, Zoey Deschenaal. The scene where Ferrell sings along with Zoey in a shower is a bit adult for a kid's film - but good on them, I reckon.