The title character is a classic holiday misfit, a cousin to Rudolph or Hermey the Elf, trying to find a niche in the vast enterprise that is Christmas. The upbeat, lanky younger son of Santa Claus, Arthur (voiced by James McAvoy) desperately wants to contribute to the family business but is a clumsy bumbler assigned to a job where he can do the least harm: answering children’s letters to the man in red.
The glory goes to his dad (Jim Broadbent), the latest in a long line of Santas, who has become a dotty figurehead as older, bolder son Steve (Hugh Laurie) revamps the sleigh-and-reindeer method with a mechanized operation that includes a massive sleighship with stealth technology. Elves descend down ropes like ninjas to leave 2 billion gifts all over the world in a single night, while Santa heir-apparent Steve oversees things from North Pole mission control.
Yet after a single present goes awry, leaving one little girl in Britain just hours away from awaking to a joyless Christmas, Steve shrugs it off as an acceptable rate of error, while drowsy Santa heads off to sleep alongside Mrs. Claus (Imelda Staunton).
Arthur, the one member of the family who truly understands the meaning of the season, can’t stand the thought of a child missing out. He and loopy Grandsanta (Bill Nighy), the former Mr. Claus who still pines for his golden days, set off in the original old reindeer-pulled sleigh to deliver the wayward present before dawn, accompanied by eager gift-wrapping elf Bryony (Ashley Jensen, copping a hilariously rippling Scottish accent).
In her directing debut, Aardman veteran Sarah Smith and her co-writer Peter Baynham offer a fresh look at the Santa legend: a flawed Claus. Santa and his kin are as dysfunctional a family as any of those on their Christmas-delivery list, with petty jealousy extending over three generations, from Grandsanta to Santa to Steve.
Only Arthur among the Claus menfolk has his heart in the right place, and it’s up to him to overcome his own ineptitude and insecurity to emerge, possibly, as the true alpha male of the Kringle clan.
