Even with Anna Kendrick and Bill Hader in the sleigh, Disney’s Noelle is no Christmas miracle
Film Reviews moviereview
The list of holiday classics released in the last century is depressingly low: Elf immediately comes to mind, Love Actually if you can stomach all the British sappiness, maybe Bad Santa for a bit of counterprogramming. Which isn’t to suggest that the yuletide season is underrepresented on screen. Even beyond the multitude of holiday movies that Hallmark and Lifetime churn out ever year, Netflix and now Disney+ are offering their own options. Disney’s Christmas offering to help kick off its streaming service is Noelle, the rare contemporary G-rated live-action film from the Mouse House. (The only expletive anyone ever utters in Noelle is “oh my garland,” which honestly doesn’t make much sense.)
To craft its wannabe holiday classic, Noelle traces some familiar plot roots. As in 2011’s (good) Arthur Christmas and 2007’s (bad) Fred Claus, the subject is the Kris Kringle family tree. Santa Claus has passed away, so his son Nick (Bill Hader) is being groomed to take over, while daughter Noelle (Anna Kendrick) remains content with pushing Christmas cheer and helping Nick in his training. The creative pedigree of Noelle just makes it more disappointing that it’s not better than it is. Besides its two often-charming leads, Julie Hagerty is also on board as Mrs. Claus, while Billy Eichner plays a tech-minded Kringle relative and Shirley MacLaine shows up as an elf. It’s also written and directed by Marc Lawrence, who has given us such solid rom-com gems as Music And Lyrics and Miss Congeniality. Unfortunately Noelle veers closer to his more recent efforts, like Did You Hear About The Morgans?
There are glimpses of something better in early scenes of Noelle trying to train her brother, with Hader effectively mugging as a reluctant Santa, lamenting his claustrophobia in chimneys and being terrified of the reindeer. He’s also not a fan of the Kringles’ Christmas-card-perfect hometown. (“I feel like I’ve been shivering my whole life.”) Inexplicably, the movie abandons their chemistry and the setting by having Nick flee to Phoenix, moving the action from the type of elaborately picturesque North Pole village those Hallmark movies could only dream of to an outdoor mall called Desert Ridge. Like Buddy The Elf before her, Noelle tries to adapt to the ways of the world as she tracks her brother, calling yoga pants “yogurt pants” and tasting sunscreen, befriending a travel agent and a private detective. She’s aided in her quest by cranky elf Polly (MacLaine) and a baby CGI reindeer named Snowflake that looks (and brays) like a goat. Meanwhile, back at “the Pole,” Gabe (Eichner) wants to add evaluation notices to the naughty-nice list and explore the possibilities of drone delivery.
As Nick has already started his own Christmas yoga class in Arizona, it seems pretty clear early on who the actual Santa is going to turn out to be. The fact that Noelle doesn’t even seem to notice that she’s gifted with skills only the real Santa is supposed to have—like understanding all languages and instantly evaluating if someone is naughty or nice—goes beyond frustrating into implausible, as if the fact that she’s not a male Kringle heir makes the whole concept of her Santa-hood too outlandish to even consider. At least the film lands on a decent message for her: that Christmas isn’t that great for everyone. Noelle learns that her detective pal is a single dad facing his first holiday season post-divorce, and visits a homeless shelter where people want much more than toys. That’s when she finally realizes that staying on the nice list can have farther-reaching ramifications than loads of presents.
To get to that message, though, we have to wade through dialogue that awkwardly describes random things as “jolly” and “naughty,” and a patriarchal system antiquated even by elf standards. It’s hard not to wince when Noelle cautions her brother, “You better not pout”; some Christmas cuteness is to be expected, but Noelle often wanders into cloying territory. A Greek chorus of carolers adds some witty musical commentary, and there’s a funny (and true) running joke of nearly every kid asking the Santas for an iPad, even though it’ll be out of date in a couple of years. But all of this doesn’t add up to the warm alchemy of a Christmas classic, or a holiday movie you’d go out of your way to watch more than once, even if it is streaming. Noelle has a few of those peppermint hot chocolate moments, but thanks to its bizarre warm-weather detour and wasting of a stellar cast, it just barely makes the nice list.
47 Comments
The best holiday movie is National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation and you can’t change my mind.
CUT MY CLAUS!!!INTO PIECES!!!
Hanktoms!
I’m back! Sort of! My old account has disappeared…much like a lot of the people that used to comment here. Hey-ooooooo!!!!!!
LIKE IT’S MY CHRISTMAS TORTE!
Fred Claus does at least get a big laugh nowadays in how the third act becomes about getting Kevin Spacey off the naughty list.
I think Old Saint Nick’s probably given that up as a lost cause by now.
That’s the exact impression I got from the trailer, two extremely talented lead actors trying their best in an overall slightly-less-than-mediocre movie
You’re more like a Bill hater.Merry Christmas, everyone!
I’d watch this if Bill Hader was playing Barry Berkman.
Being in this movie would turn anyone homicidal.
What exactly do you think “The last century” is?
Well, it looks like we’re not going to get another one.
I guess we should just all start having lots of sex.
You guys go ahead. I’m saving myself for Natalie Dormer.
If Trump hadn’t won the war on Christmas we might never have had this movie.
Gawd bless us everyone.
We don’t need a long list of holiday classics when we have Die Hard.
From the description, this does not seem like a movie that actually exists. This is a real movie?
Yep. Watching it right now. C+ is about right, and only because of Kendrick, Hader, and MacClaine (and she’s only doing an elf-themed variation of her character from Steel Magnolias, anyway).
Noelle? Elle no!
Well Anna Kendrick gets to be adorable in this, but at what cost. At what cost
For every A Simple Plan or Mr. Right, you’ve gotta make one for the check.
Let’s come up with better ideas for Christmas movies. I’ll start:This winter, everyone’s favorite Austrian Christmas monster goes to college in:KRAMPUS 2: BIG MAN ON KRAMPUS
Do we need another movie celebrating college hookup culture?
If by “hookup” you mean “a mythical abomination hanging coeds from the ceiling on hooks,” then yes.
‘Rebel Without a Claus’: Neglected due to his father’s endless work evaluating the niceness of the world’s children, Santa’s son has become a juvenile delinquent. Can he learn the true meaning of the holiday before he ends up in juvie? Starring the digitally re-created spectre of James Dean.
I think you’ve just described the plot of Santa Clause 2.THE MRS. CLAUSE
From the review it seems like they made a perfectly mediocre mildly comical Xmas movie. That’s pretty much what people are looking for. It’ll probably do great.
By the fairly relaxed standards of the Christmas movie, this still fails.
I have not seen it, I’m not much of a Xmas movie person, but usually the well loved ones are just blah to me. (And Hocus Pocus is stupid too, I don’t get it.)
If you don’t like the “good” Christmas movies, then dear god, don’t even consider watching this one!
has anyone wasted their popularity more than kendrick? jamie foxx, cuba gooding, anyone else?
OJ.
you win
Christmas movies are inherently trash.
I dunno… it was cute. And Santa Claus dies! I haven’t watched many movies with Santa Claus, but this is the first movie I’ve watched where Santa Claus dies. And if you like Anna Kendrick, she’s adorable, as usual. It’s free. Well… “free” if you already subscribe anyway. If you have 90 minutes to wait for something, it’ll help the time go by.
‘The Santa Clause’ kills of Old Saint Nick fairly early.
Is that the one with Tim Allen? If he’s not Buzz Lightyear, I avoid his movies. Oh, and Galaxy Quest.
It’s the premise of the whole movie!
And The Hebrew Hammer murders Santa rather gruesomely!
Kendrick’s a damn talented actress. I hope she can start getting some good roles soon.
*obligatory plug for A Simple Favor*
She has a new sci-fi thriller movie next year with toni collette, should be great.
I heard a brief mention from Bill Hader in a podcast about how he asked if he could improvise in this movie and the director said no. Would it have been such a bad thing…?I like all the actors in this, and the idea of Julie Hagerty and Bill Hader sharing scenes (do they have any good scenes together?) makes me happy, but I’m not surprised it’s getting weak reviews. I get the feeling this is something Hader mostly did for cash and he probably wouldn’t even be getting such promotion for if he hadn’t blown up over the last two years. I wonder if Disney now wishes they had put him in something else – if their pace of global domination continues then surely we’ll be seeing Vinny Vedecci plushies at Disneyworld, right? I hope Anna Kendrick gets a good role soon.
I made it through just under 20 minutes of this. It’s seriously, stunningly awful.
Counterpoint:I have two daughters, aged 7 and 10. They freakin loved it!Younger daughter’s review: “It was amazing. It was about a girl, and there’s no rule that you can’t have a girl Santa.”