There’s more touching, heart-tugging stuff next, albeit with but a fraction of The Grinch’s budget, in 2017’s TV movie 48 Christmas Wishes. Co-directors Marco Deufemia and Justin G. Dyck serve up another sweet reminder that there is a lot you can do with the malleable Christmas movie formula. This is a pretty original idea, telling the tale of two little elves who have to leave the North Pole for the first time ever after accidentally losing an entire town’s letters to Santa. On their quest to find out what these children wished for, they become involved with a family still mourning their deceased dad. I’m watching this on Valentine's Day and I’d been hoping for something a little more romantic, but I guess this will do.
It's a mixture of silly hijinks and sad stuff and for the most part they do a decent balancing act, though again I’m a little miffed by the lack of Elf Consistency. In this one some of Santa’s helpers are played by kids, some by adults, other by old men, all with the standard fake pointy ears stuck on. It’s unclear what the deal is, with a young elf who looks about 9 years old commenting that they have ‘graduated’ from elf school. Are they child elves or are they really old? Do they age slowly? So many unanswered questions. You, dear reader, may not be troubled by such trivialities, but by now I have disappeared down the Christmas rabbit hole and these are the issues that now haunt my troubled dreams.
Luckily, our two lead elves Mindy (Clara Kushnir) and Cam (Ethan Yang, no other credits) are portrayed by actual children and give cute, naturalistic performances. They really do seem like first-time actors, which actually strengthens the film as they convey a proper sense of sweet naiveté that you probably wouldn’t get from polished Disney Channel urchins.
On the subject of ‘elf tropes,’ I’m noticing another recurring theme in these films where genuine elves who journey to the ‘real’ world are usually, at some point, mistaken for ‘pretend’ elves, ie. actors who work in malls and stuff. Then, despite their protestations, they’ll be roped into working at a mall Santa’s grotto or toy shop or something like that, even though nobody’s ever seen them before. Hey, you’re in an elf costume, you must work here, get to work! It’s silly, but it seems to happen a lot and feels really forced in this one.
Anyway, this one feels amateurish but remains charming, even if it gets a bit dark with themes of children dealing with bereavement again. Seriously, there are so many dead parents in these films.
There are some cool ideas, pretty well realised on the film’s micro-budget, like when the elves travel into the human world by going in reverse through the mail chute that brings Santa’s letters, emerging cheerily from a post box. Then they go undercover (wearing ear-concealing hats) in a school to find out what gifts the kids want.
There are some lame gags, like when Cam and Mindy try to blend into the human world by taking advice from a book about how humans act. The joke is that the book is really old, though it's really not clear which decade this publication is meant to be from, when the guys dress up in ridiculous visors and shiny metal jackets. I don’t recall that particular fashion trend but they do look outlandishly silly, so chortle chortle, I guess.
It's a cheap and cheerful effort that’s likeable enough, especially for undemanding children, though again it carries that confusing mixed message of ‘Christmas isn’t just about presents, but we need to make sure all the kids get presents or everything’s ruined.’ There are a few too many tonal detours into poignant melodrama, especially when letters from the dead dad are discovered, making this quite hefty for a children’s film. But these are leavened out by mad moments of elves doing the ‘floss’ dance for some cheap laughs in scenes that try hard to throw in cultural references 2017 tots would understand, but which will almost certainly really date this movie.
Though this is by no means a technically ‘good’ film, it gets pass marks from me for sheer charm and effort and for being weirdly watchable. I’m finding the kids films - even the rubbishy ones - to mostly be so much easier to enjoy than the Hallmark movies. This is most likely because they’re usually just honest films trying to tell simple stories with simple messages for impressionable little ones, trying to ensure they don’t grow up to be Grinchy villains. I think that the absence of much mushy romance in these tales is also refreshing, after a month of mushiness and also, on a basic level, it’s really just hard not to enjoy stories with adorable little sprogs being all cute in them.
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