For hundreds of years, the Claus family has delegated the title "Santa" to a chosen few of its members, which can be passed down upon retirement. Each Christmas, Santa and his vast army of highly trained elves produce gifts and distribute them around the world in a one-night high-tech operation. However, when one of 600 million children to receive a gift from Santa on Christmas Eve is missed, it is deemed ‘acceptable’ to all but one—Arthur Claus, the current Santa’s misfit son deemed ineligible for the title, who executes an unauthorised rookie mission to get the last present halfway around the globe before dawn on Christmas morning.
A good watch.
I had a fine time watching 'Arthur Christmas'. The plot is a little light, with a fairly simple event taking a relative while to resolve itself, but it's still a pleasant festive animated film - with neat animation.
There are a number of familiar names on the voice cast, too many to name in actual fact. My personal standout is Hugh Laurie as Steven, though James McAvoy, Bill Nighy and Jim Broadbent are all enjoyable too.
It is actually quite hard to find innovative ways to tell Santa stories now, but this one does do quite well on that score. It all centres on Santa's now almost entirely automated delivery process using a sleigh clearly inspired by the starship "Enterprise". Horror of horrors, though, when the youngest member of the Claus family - the eponymous "Arthur" - discovers that one young girl isn't going to get her expertly wrapped bicycle! His dad "Steve" is content to put it down to a technical glitch, and his grandad (the sitting Santa) is too tired to bother, too. It falls to "Grand Santa", "Arthur" and his old fairy-dust powered, reindeer-pulled, sled to get the bike to the little "Gwen" before the sun comes up on Christmas morning. What now e...