Noelle

With the creation of holiday movies entering an almost factory-like rate of production thanks to television channels like Hallmark and streaming services like Netflix, it is hard to have a genuinely good Christmas movie stand out from the Jingle Bell Brides and A Christmas Princes. One might even wonder where the quality holiday films, like A Christmas Story or Miracle on 34th Street have gone. The good news is that Noelle is head and shoulders above the cookie cutter Christmas cinema of the Hallmark channel. The bad news is that it still feels derivative and bland.

On the positive side, the movie has a pretty great cast. Anna Kendrick does an admirable job as the film’s fish-out-of-water lead. Bill Hader is a delight, as he almost always is, despite his relatively small part. Billy Eichner, whose raucous shouty energy really only works in specific roles, gives an atypically subdued performance that might be his best work to date. Some of the supporting cast is a little more drab, but all in all, it is a charming cast befitting a charming movie.

It is also funny. With a mixture of amusing situations; clever, quippy dialogue; and absurd twists on familiar holiday concepts, Noelle was able to get more than a few chuckles out of me. Not a side splitter, by any means, but not without its moments.

It is also sweet and sincere. To punctuate the comedic and lighthearted moments are plenty of touching and bittersweet ones that fit with the Christmas season’s more somber and sentimental side. Some may find these scenes trite, but I’m a softy and they worked on me.

This all makes for a decent Christmas movie, though one unlikely to become a classic. There is a problem, however. That problem is Elf. The two are just so similar that comparing them is inevitable. While the story details of Noelle are not exactly the same as Elf, the tone, message, main character, story beats, and holiday theme all feel basically the same. Elf is about someone who grew up in the North Pole going to America to find a missing relative. So is Noelle. Elf gets many of its comedic moments in having the main character not understand how the world outside Santa’s workshop functions, frequently taking Christmas traditions too seriously or taking commercialized Christmas artifice as genuine. So does Noelle. Elf has the main character spread the joy of Christmas to the beleaguered and cynical locals by helping them to believe again. So does Noelle. Both climaxes center around Santa’s sleigh and whether all the toys will be delivered on time. Sure, there are things that are different. Noelle is about an elf, whereas Elf is about a human. The titular character is looking for her brother, not her dad. Noelle does not have a strong romantic subplot and Elf does. However, these are minor things, really. The movies are cut from the same cloth and Noelle is the inferior garment. Standing on its own, Noelle is still probably only good, not great, but given how many of its stand out moments feel like something Elf already did better, it ends up feeling tired and cliche.

The one place the movie really tries to differentiate itself is in attempting some kind of feminist message about elvish society unnecessarily demanding that Santa be male, and that the duties of Santa be passed to a male heir, none of which clicked for me. Sure, there are some interesting parallels to the Rudolph story, in that the unlikely and overlooked character turns out to be necessary for Christmas to happen, but it is so hamfisted in its execution that it comes across too simplistic for even a kids movie.

The way these ideas are presented feel out of place for this kind of movie. For starters, the choice to make the idyllic fantasy world of the North Pole into a restrictive patriarchal society seems very odd. In the same way that kids don’t need to consider how the toy workshops might, in an oblique way, be reminiscent of a sweatshop, they probably don’t need to consider Santa’s maleness in a larger social context. Kids will imagine the North Pole as idealized and perfect as they are able and it feels weird for a family friendly movie to intrude on that space.

Beyond that, these kinds of films are designed to be streamlined and fun. It’s a lighthearted Christmas story, after all. This means Noelle must breeze past the difficult ideas it itself presents, which only serves to do a disservice to them. Does it not undercut the struggle for equality to imply it can be solved as easily as it must be to satisfy the simplistic storytelling of a kid’s movie? The result is something that seems silly instead of empowering.

The brother being assumed to eventually take up the role of Santa is needed for the movie, don’t get me wrong, as a source of narrative conflict and as a way to force Noelle out of the North Pole to go looking for him, but this could have been accomplished in a number of better ways. For example, her brother being the eldest could have been the justification instead. Or selecting the brother to take over was an internal family one, perhaps based on an incorrect assessment of the siblings’ level of work ethic and maturity, rather than a way to try to crowbar in a condemnation of self-perpetuating patriarchal power structures into a cozy little Christmas movie. Either of these could have been done without making any major changes to 95% of the movie, in structure or script.

Noelle is a largely forgettable, middle of the road Christmas movie with some flaws, including one major one. It has a charming cast, a few humorous moments, and a few tender ones. However, it feels like a slightly worse version of Elf. It doesn’t tell exactly the same story, but the main way it differentiates itself is through a poorly written and somewhat empty social point.

Would Recommend: If you’ve never seen Elf.

Would Not Recommend: If you have seen Elf.