Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Elf Me’ on Amazon Prime Video, an Italian Christmas Kid Flick That’s Equal Parts Silly and Derivative

The directorial entity known as YouNuts! (a.k.a. Niccolo Celaia and Antonio Usbergo) applies the wacky sensibilities we saw in their previous features Under the Riccione Sun and Watch Out, We’re Mad to Christmas with Elf Me (now streaming on Amazon Prime Video), a punny double-entendre that doesn’t quite fit with a family-friendly holiday romp, but whatever. And “whatever” is how you might feel about this Italian comedy about a misfit North Pole elf who finds himself thrust into human society – and maybe resembles that OTHER misfit North Pole elf who found himself thrust into human society, in a movie that’s now a classic, something this one probably isn’t going to be. But maybe it’s nonetheless tolerable? Let’s find out.

ELF ME: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Armed with a knife, a creepy marionette Santa Claus climbs on Elia’s (Federico Ielapi) bed and STABS him awake. No, this isn’t a Chuckyfied holiday saga – the puppet is under the control of Elia’s wacky mom, Ivana (Anna Foglietta), who we learn is a steadfast proponent of old-fashioned toys, and owns a struggling antique toy shoppe-with-a-pe. Two things about this situation: One, Elia’s dad is out of the picture for reasons we’ll learn in the third act, which makes him sad. And two, the scourge of Ivana’s existence is Buddy Buddy, a fad doll that I believe is a chihuahua in overalls and that every kid wants this Christmas, and seems to be singlehandedly running the shoppe-with-a-pe out of business. Elia is a bit of a misfit, with a couple of misfit friends, and they all exist to be tormented by the local bully squad, one of whom is the son of Ciocca (Claudio Santamaria), a greasy gent who has acquired a warehouse full of Buddy Buddy dolls, and by the looks of things, they probably “fell off a truck.” His attempt to sell his wares to Ivana is met with vehement rejection, because she apparently believes that kids should have old wooden things and jacks and crap instead of shiny disposable junk. She has a point, but also, hey Ivana, don’t be such a damned toy luddite.

Elia’s story is intercut with the busy-busy goings-on at the North Pole as the elves toil in the toy factory, prepping for the Big Night, when the lolly old guy known here as Your Toyness does his thang. Trip (Lillo Petrollo) is a weirdo elf who doesn’t fit in with the other elves because the movie needs him to be that way in order to better relate to the human children who don’t fit in with the other human children, when the weirdo elf inevitably finds himself thrust into the world of human children. Trip makes oddball toys that all invariably end up in the rejecto-pile, and when his supervisor tells him to can the crap and get to sewing footballs, he doesn’t. One of the stupid things he concocted was a present launcher, which he accidentally activates, and then subsequently finds himself in a gift box, flying through Canada and Egypt and landing in Italy, specifically in Elia’s house. This possibly has something to do with Elia pulling a Crafter Elf card out of a pack of cards that aren’t Magic: The Gathering, because that shit’s copyrighted – or maybe it has nothing to do with it, because who can tell in a movie that isn’t particularly concerned with making sense? 

And thus, we’ve possibly determined in what year-ish this movie occurs, and I deduce the early-to-mid-’90s, because of the existence of a don’t-call-it-Magic: The Gathering game, and because nobody has a cell phone yet, and because Buddy Buddy is probably supposed to be a facsimile of the Furby or Cabbage Patch crazes. Where was I again? Right: Trip secretly pals around with Elia after they find themselves in a significantly less-charming E.T./Elliott scenario. Perhaps Trip will get involved with saving Ivana’s store, and thwarting the diabolical schemes of the local Legitimate Businessman, and doing something about the bullies, but hey, no spoilers here, nosirree. But here’s the catch, and where Elf Me expands upon the usual Santa Mythos: The elf’s gotta do his thing before midnight on Xmas Eve or he DIES. Like, totally dead, kaput, six feet under the permafrost dead. Elia can send him back to the North Pole with a return letter to Santa, which he should do sooner rather than later, but hey, if he did, this movie would be much shorter than it is.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: It seems YouNuts! (exclamation point necessary) apparently desperately wants us to compare Elf Me to Elf, E.T. and Gremlins. 

Performance Worth Watching: I liked Foglietta in the mom role – moms always hold everything together, and that’s true here in this movie, which doesn’t seem particularly interested in doing anything too new or unfamiliar. 

Memorable Dialogue: Sample “funny” lines via Trip: “We make this too at the North Pole. We use reindeer snot”; “I love the smell of ski wax in the morning.”

Sex and Skin: Nobody gets “elfed” here, so, none.

Our Take: Elf Me has Random Nonsense Syndrome, an affliction suffered by kiddie movies that try too hard to be funny and therefore aren’t nearly funny enough, and that attempt to cover up the lack of a coherent plot with wild ‘n’ wacky crapola. YouNuts!, a name that begs to be followed by parenthetical commentary (hey, WE aren’t the ones who are nuts, YOU are, so maybe it should be WeNuts!), show a bit of visual acumen, building a colorful old-world-style reality for their characters to fart around in, whether they’re choreographing a rip-roaring sled race or ripping off a flying-bicycle sequence from a far, far better classic children’s film. And to the latter I say to the world, please stop Amblinicizing us! If we want to be Amblinicized, we can just watch the old movies and not the new ones that really want to be like the old ones!

At the very least, the film isn’t cynical; it’s not chock-full of anticapitalist yearnings, but rather, it’s quite fond of a more gentle style of early-to-mid-century capitalism where handcrafted toy gifts were preferable over mass-produced junkola. Read: It’s more in the spirit of Christmas if ya shop local, ya jerks! And besides, when a weirdo elf applies his magic to a thing someone carved, the result is far more charming than when it’s applied to something from a Chinese assembly line. And so Elf Me unfolds predictably, and for Elia and Trip, all is as it should be, although one is left with a sense of dissatisfaction that the movie isn’t even close to being as it could be. 

Our Call: Less-discerning audiences might be mollified by Elf Me’s silliness for a bit, but it’s far too derivative of other, better movies to wholeheartedly recommend. So SKIP IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.