Something to watch tonight: Thursday 21 December

Arthur Christmas (Smith/Cook, 2011)

As this is the last “Something to watch tonight” news­let­ter for 2023 – I’m tak­ing a break in between the stat hol­i­days – I thought I’d bet­ter remind you of our family’s Christmas Eve movie ritual.

For nearly elev­en years, we have gathered to laugh ourselves silly over what I real­ise now is basic­ally Succession on ice – will Malcolm Claus (Jim Broadbent) finally hand over the reins to “Techno Tommy” Steve (Hugh Laurie) or will the unlikely Arthur (James McAvoy) make a bet­ter case.

Back in 2011, I reviewed it for the Capital Times and pre­dicted that it would become a Christmas Day ritu­al rather than a Christmas Eve one but oth­er­wise I was spot on:

I believe that it should be illeg­al to even men­tion the word Christmas in any month oth­er than December. Yup, illeg­al. No one should be allowed to even breathe it, let alone have parades, dis­play mince pies in super­mar­kets or throw staff parties. If, as a once-great nation, we can restrict fire­work sales to three days before Guy Fawkes I’m sure we can man­age to pull our col­lect­ive yuletide-obsessed heads in for a few weeks and focus all that atten­tion on only one month a year.

At least that’s what I thought until last Friday. That was when I saw the new pic­ture from England’s Aardman Animation, Arthur Christmas. I was pre­pared, based on my afore­men­tioned bah-humbuggery – and some unpre­pos­sess­ing trail­ers – to be scorn­ful and yet I was won over. Won over to the extent that I might as well be wrapped in tin­sel with a fairy on top. Arthur Christmas made me believe in Christmas a week before I was ready.

This film is digit­al 3D rather than the stop-motion clay mod­els that made Aardman fam­ous, but the inven­tion, wit, pace, struc­ture and com­mit­ment to theme are all securely in place, brought to life by an awe­some UK voice cast (Jim Broadbent and Bill Nighy both do out­stand­ing work) and some bril­liantly clev­er visuals.

Arthur (James McAvoy) is the pimply young­er son of Santa (Broadbent), kept well out of the way of the military-style inter­na­tion­al present dis­tri­bu­tion oper­a­tion over­seen by big bro Steve (Hugh Laurie) from their North Pole fort­ress. The job of Santa is handed down from fath­er to son and it’s look­ing like this Santa is ready for retire­ment but when Steve’s sys­tem breaks down and one wee girl looks like miss­ing out on her present Arthur and Grandsanta (Nighy) bring the reindeer and sleigh out of moth­balls and go to the rescue.

Against all expect­a­tion, I adored Arthur Christmas and I can see it becom­ing a bit of a tra­di­tion at my place. We’ll listen to the Queen’s Speech on the old cat’s whisker (or the inter­net or whatever) and then power up the big screen for a grand Christmas laugh and cry. Ho ho ho, rest you, merry and all that.

Also reviewed in that November 2011 column were Gerard Smyth’s har­row­ing doc­u­ment­ary about the Christchurch earth­quake, When a City Falls; oddball Auckland thrill­er set in a retire­ment home, Rest for the Wicked; Henry Cavill and Luke Evans as her­oes from Greek myth­o­logy in Immortals (“… soon to be the oppos­ite of immor­tal”) and Richard Ayoade’s debut fea­ture film Submarine.

Where to find Arthur Christmas

Aotearoa: Digital rent­al from Apple, Neon or Microsoft

Australia: Streaming on Binge or Stan

USA: Streaming on Prime Video, Max or TNT

UK: Streaming on SkyNow

Further listening

I hos­ted the last edi­tion of At the Movies for 2023 on RNZ National last night: Wonka, Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget and Kelly Reichardt’s bril­liant Showing Up. It is play­ing again at 1.30 on Christmas Eve after­noon and 12.30am on Christmas Morning. Or you can stream it here.