Arthur Christmas (2011)

Truly Dreadful Film

Did you people see the same film I saw?

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

It's hard these days to be an animated movie that's not Pixar or (more and more) Dreamworks. This movie kind of fell short for me, but wasn't too bad.Arthur Christmas is an interesting take on the Christmas narrative that seems a bit too dark and a little all-over-the-place.By dark, I mean, it focuses entirely on the Santa Claus line, while apparently belittling everyone from the Elves to Mrs. Claus. I expect a bit more cheer, or at least recognition, in my holiday flicks, but this movie never offered it. It's a simple, cheap (time, emotion, etc) film to watch, but don't expect yourself to be brimming with joviality after.

Movies about Santa Claus tend to be rather... traditional. What I mean, they usually keep with the old and tried values. Lots of woodworking, hand-crafting, old methods, putting your back into it. Thus, it is very nice and different to see a film where Santa uses extremely modern methods to achieve his goals. The sleigh has been replaced with an ultra high-tech spaceship, the elves work more like highly-trained special ops units, everything is run with the precision of a military operation and the children are merely a statistic to be achieved.And yet, in the end, not really. That's the first five minutes, the starting point, but the film still holds with the spirit of the old. It simply takes into account the fact that Santa probably would keep up with the achievements of technology, while also exploring the downsides of this. Okay, what's the story? Arthur Christmas, the eponymous main character, is the younger son of Santa, who in turn is the scion of a long life of Santas. And now, during his 70th Christmas Eve, he's all set to turn the reins over to Steve, Arthur's older brother, but it just so happens that they miss a child. And through various reasons it's up to Arthur to save the Christmas of this one lone child, really an insignificant error in an otherwise flawless performance.Pretty basic Christmas story, but it's the premise and the characters that make it worth watching. The animation is very high-quality, the character designs look very nice, the soundtrack works and all in all it looks suitably Christmasy. And the characters are great. From bumbling and senile Grandsanta to the current Santa, who's far past his prime, to Steve, who's ultra-efficient, but self-admittedly not that good with kids, to Arthur himself, who lacks self-confidence and precision, but is pretty much the only one with his heart still in the right place.It's a fun film, and definitely a future Christmas classic. It will dazzle you with its vision and characters, while still delivering the same good old Christmas message that we all expect from our Yuletide films.

I just watched this movie and I feel like it ruined the magic and spirit of Christmas. Santa Claus doesn't read the children's letter's, he doesn't deliver the presents he doesn't eat the cookies or anything children believe he does. He doesn't fly a sleigh pulled by eight reindeer or by magic. One line in the movie actually is "don't worry children are stupid" and nobody reacts to him saying it like they all believe it. It's terrible! The family of the "Clauses" have no Christmas spirit except Arthur. Santa Claus doesn't care for the children of the world. This movie made me sad. The elves do ABSOLUTELY everything. The Clauses are selfish and very unlikable. Don't watch this movie unless you want to feel your childhood crumble.

As a huge fan of Aardman, I could not wait to see Arthur Christmas and I was not disappointed. Christmas is also one of my favourite holidays.It had a hilarious story about how Santa Claus works around that time of year to get all the presents to the children in time. It had excellent voice acting with James McAvoy as Arthur Claus, Hugh Laurie as Steven "Steve" Claus, Bill Nighy as Grand Santa, Jim Broadbent as Malcolm "Santa" Claus, Imelda Staunton as Margaret Claus and Ramona Marquez as Gwen Hines to name a few. It also had great animation, Aardman used computer animation instead of stop- motion clay animation, nice to see a style, lovable characters, a fantastic score by Harry Gregson-Williams, and the chemistry between Arthur and Gwen was really heartwarming.If you have not seen this movie, go ahead and watch it right now. A must watch!