Arthur Christmas: A Summary... And Things

I often forget that I absolutely adore children's movies. Mostly because they're fucking ridiculous.

Hint: Robots is one of my favourite movies. I should probably watch that next.

I'm watching Arthur Christmas right now and it's like 7am and everyone is asleep so I'm trying not to be loud, but ohmygod, a fucking dead rat just fell out of a trumpet in this animated kids' movie and I can't stop laughing about it. This is like actually the greatest movie ever.

All I knew about it before was that Bill Nighy was in it and played like Grandpa Santa or something like that. Also, that they had a special on at Denny's in which they had christmas cookie shakes and pancakes. Which were excellent, in the event that you were wondering how it was to have cookie bits in your shakes and pancakes. Yum!

Anyway. I found out James McAvoy was in this and was apparently adorable in it, so I decided to watch it because really what else have I to do at 7am?

Basically, it's about this guy Arthur (McAvoy), who is the youngest son of Santa (Jim Broadbent). He's really clumsy and kind of fail, so he's pretty much been banished to the letters department of the North Pole in which he reads and replies to all the letters to Santa. His older brother Steve (Hugh Laurie) is in charge of the whole present delivery operation and he runs that from the North Pole. It's basically that there's a bunch of mission control elves and they control things from the command room at the North Pole, and then the presents get delivered by a bunch of specialist elves in a futuristic aircraft shaped like a massive sleigh. Santa pretty much delivers one present per country by himself because he's a. really old, and b. not really good at it anymore or something. Grandsanta (Nighy) is the former Santa and tells stories about how he delivered presents during wars with reindeer, a sleigh, and a drunken elf. So basically, they miss delivering some girl's twinkle bike in the initial go-around, so Grandsanta and Arthur bust out the old sleigh and the reindeer and go to deliver it themselves.

Also. Grandsanta has some ridiculous old pet reindeer that has a surgery cone on it. And, the version I'm watching is from some ripped DVD that was supposed to be used for award consideration. So it's perfect aside from the occasional "FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION" across the bottom of the screen. It's nice to watch a brand new movie from my computer without shitty filmed-in-cinema sound or people walking across the screen. Because that totally happens to me all the time.

(I'm actually technically live-blogging my first time watching this.)

The movie is totally gorgeous. The storyline, the animation, the score.
They sail on this sleigh through the Northern Lights, amongst narwhals, AND almost run into the fucking CN Tower, which was super rad as I wasn't really expecting to see Toronto at Christmas this year. I kind of miss it. Also. They nearly run into City Hall. Ohgod. Best line, "The Santa's always come through Canada! No one lives here! It's nice and quiet!" And then they lose a reindeer somewhere in the middle of Toronto. Hilarity.

Anyway, they get lost in Idaho, get shot at, accidentally impersonate a flying saucer by getting tangled in lights, and end up in Africa. Which Grandsanta assures Arthur is France. "They have elephants in France?!" "The odd stray. They breed in the drains."

Back at the North Pole, Steve is freaking out that Grandsanta has escaped as the occasional wild old person does. He digs up the old head of sleigh communications to get some ancient type-writer-esque machine used for contacting the old sleigh out and get it up and running.

MEANWHILE ON THE SERENGETI, Arthur, and elf, and Grandsanta are surrounded by lions who want to eat them. Arthur is attempting to pacify them with his fuzzy light-up slippers and singing. They escape, and, after a struggle, fly away.

Using GPS, they finally make it to the girl's house to deliver her bike. Only then Grandsanta throws a crabby bitchfit and refuses to come in to deliver the present so Arthur and the elf, Bryony, do it instead. They set off the alarm, but deliver the bike anyway... only there's already a bike there, at which point they discover that they're actually in Mexico, not England as they should be. And just when you think they'll make it... they end up stranded in Cuba.

The elves all wake Santa up and ask if he's actually missed a child. He sort-of brushes it off which leads to them asking why that one doesn't matter and why, if she doesn't matter, Arthur and Grandsanta have gone to deliver her present. And then the elves freak out and start asking Steve if it's true that children aren't real, and are only made of anti-matter. And then Steve throws a hissy-fit and walks out singing and leaves all the complex technology up to Santa because he's angry that his father didn't retire and leave being Santa to him. Also, it show-cases Hugh Laurie's wonderful singing voice.

Arthur, Bryony the elf, Grandsanta, and the ridiculously old reindeer escape from Cuba in a stolen rowboat. Grandsanta tells them how reindeer are actually morons and will just fly in a straight line round and round the world. They devise a plan to get back into the sleigh. Arthur miraculously ends up back in the sleigh, manages to stop it, and "steer" it back down to the others, after which Grandsanta takes over because Arthur is a shit driver.

Santa, Mrs. Claus, and Steve take the sleigh shaped space-ship out to deliver Gwen her present on the assumption that Arthur and Grandsanta will be epic fail at it. They don't actually tell the elves that they're leaving, though, which causes a panic. They think the Santas are leaving and that Christmas doesn't matter (seeing as perhaps children don't matter either, seeing as one was missed and a big deal wasn't immediately made about it) which leads them to press some sort of panic button that cancels Christmas.

Back in the sleigh, they manage to break past Earth's atmosphere to finally see where they're going. Coming back down through the atmosphere, as one would expect, sets the sleigh ablaze with friction. They're leaving a trail of flames and they loose their three remaining reindeer and end up plummeting down through the clouds. The incredibly old pet reindeer of Grandsanta shakes it's surgical cone off and jumps to the rescue in front of the sleigh. They're worried about being spotted, so they use the UFO camouflage setting to disguise the sleigh as a flying saucer. Which is hilarious.

Meanwhile, defence leaders of the world are having a video meeting about safety threats to the planet because they actually think the planet is being invaded by aliens. It doesn't help that the sleigh goes into UFO mode a few seconds before it shows up on the defence cameras and is subsequently the first view of it they get. So, some aircraft ends up following them, attracted by the electronics in Arthur's slippers. They all abandon sleigh and it gets blown up, which is quite sad as it was a thing of beauty.

The spacesleigh ends up in Trelew and Steve goes down to deliver an upgraded bike... and realises that they've ended up in Mexico. They then high-tail it over to England where Arthur is managing to deliver the present. ...also where a slightly delerious Grandsanta is driving around in a garbage can pulled by his old pet reindeer. All three rush into the house to fight over who gets to deliver the present first. Santa decides that Arthur should do it and subsequently become the new Santa.

In the end everyone is happy, which is nice.

Anyway... that has been a summary. In the event that you were wondering the entire plot of Arthur Christmas but didn't want to go see it. But it's slightly sad because it's definitely worth seeing but now I've gone and spoiled it for you all. I'm sorry.

So yeah. This has been a blog.