First, I apologize for the two week delay, but christmas sometimes means spending time with your family, and when you live in the middle of nowhere, that means a lot of traveling.
Quite a wonderful movie this is, this movie might just be my second favorite telling of the story of Santa (I'll leave my favorite telling for a special occasion). The story tells what could also very well be one of the most "realistic" tellings of Christmas.
The movie was made by Sony Pictures Animation, just like Surf's Up, and I feel that these guys really know their stuff when it comes to adding realism to the fantasy. And I don't mean that ridiculous "gritty realism" we keep seeing in modern cinema like "The Dark Knight" or in video games like "Call of Duty", I'm talking about where the writers see the world for what it is, and consider it as if this WAS the real world, a movie about Santa in the modern world, delivering presents to every child every year and the real workings of it all.
The movie stars Arthur, the son of the current Santa, Malcolm. He is pretty much a klutz and worries about everything, but he cares deeply for every child in the world, working in the mail room and answering every letter Santa can get. His older brother, Steve, is currently next in line to be Santa and is trying really hard to make Christmas goes as smoothly as possible, using state-of-the-art magitech to solve his problems and figure everything out.
Now, what's Magitech? I won't go too much into it, but basically it means that the technology is powered by Magic. The magic in this case, comes from the Aurora Borealis, up on the north pole, which allows for reindeer to fly and pull sleighs. Frankly, I LOVE this. The logic behind it all feels like it came from the imagination of a child on how Santa works. Which is how it should be.
The story followers suit when Arthur finds out that the present of a young girl was failed to be delivered and he is heartbroken. He eventually gets strung up by his grandfather, who wants to prove that the old ways still work, by getting the present to the girl himself. Problems ensue as Steve is incredibly jaded by his work in delivering presents to every single child that he just can't find it in himself to care for every single one of them. The elves freak out and start to believe that the Santas are betraying them and all seems lost.
The movie is brilliant and has one of the best stories a christmas story has. Almost always people try to shove down the throats of the audience about the "true meaning of christmas", but here Christmas isn't important, it's the children that are.
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