Seeing the picture of Will Ferrell as an Elf mocked-up on so many boxes of Sainsbury’s Corn Flakes this year has been a cheery sight. An odd one though, own label products always used to be free from marketing hype and tie-ins. That was the provenance of your Kellogg’s or Weetabix*, with a free toy, glow-in-the-dark diorama or tazo. Sainsbury’s own labels as far as I was aware were barely sullied by the marketing dollar at all. But seeing perky Will in last years (and this decades) best Christmas film promotes a smile.
In retrospect Elf was a bit of a guaranteed hit. For story it fuses the two Christmas classics A Christmas Carol (James Caan = Scrooge) and Miracle On 34th Street (Buddy is proof Santa exists). Admitted the third side of this unbeatable Christmas story behemoth being Ghostbusters II was unorthodox. But I have an mp3 of Zooey Deschanel singing Baby It’s Cold Outside playing now, and it even makes me thing of Ghostbusters II in a more positive light.