An Elf's Story: The Elf on the Shelf

I wouldn't say this is destined to reach the holiday status of "Rudolf The Red Nosed Reindeer" or "A Charlie Brown Christmas." It's a basically child-friendly story about "scout elves" who visit a family every year as part of their Christmas celebrations. It comes across perhaps too overtly as a marketing ploy for "The Elf On The Shelf" book. We have one of those. Our daughter named our elf Louie and he appears every year around this time, taking nightly reports back to Santa on how she's doing. The elf that this show revolves around is named Chippey, and he's been sent to help a young boy named Taylor McTuttle rediscover what Christmas is all about, because he's started not to believe in Santa.

Chippey doesn't really do anything except fly back and forth from the North Pole to the McTuttle's house. That's true. Taylor seems to rediscover what Christmas is about but I wasn't entirely sure why or how an elf on the shelf helped him to do that. Of course, that's all explained by Santa, who says that scout elves never make people believe because that has to come from within the person. No argument, but I saw nothing that would have made Taylor think twice.

The show includes some appropriate holiday messages about not being selfish and being forgiving. One can't argue with that, of course. The animation was nothing special - somewhat similar to the type of animation found in "Rudolf." Christmas message aside, this still struck me as being too much of a marketing ploy for "The Elf On The Shelf." (3/10)