An Elf's Story: The Elf on the Shelf

Modern classic, especially if you had an elf on the shelf!

I'm still watching this in January. Only 20 mins long so a nice wee Christmas story for elf loving kids

Nothing special about this movie and perhaps it is a marketing gimmick, but so what? My 3 and 5 year old kids love it. They ask to see it over and over, and that's what I base my rating on. No need to over analyze this one. It's cute to see the kids wake up every morning and search for the elf. After that, they want to see this short movie. I appreciate the fact that it's a short movie for the fact that small kids generally have a short attention span. Kids shouldn't really spend too much time watching TV anyway. All in all, I think it's a cute movie perfect for young kids. Not sure why this got so many low ratings; surely the kids watching it are not the ones rating it on here. I rated it 9/10 for young audiences.

An Elf's Story: The Elf on the Shelf is a special that serves as nothing more than a nearly 27 minute commercial for the Elf on the Shelf, a series of elf dolls that are used by parents to keep their kids from being naughty. Here, a new scout elf chooses to go to family with a boy Santa wants him to help, as he does not believe in Christmas anymore. Given the name Chippy, the elf tries to help the boy get back in the spirit of Christmas.

The special is horrible and serves as nothing more than a commercial for the Elf On The Shelf dolls and book. When the Scout Elves are sent out, they are packed in a box that comes with a book similar to the ones the product comes in (as if the special keeps screaming out that it's serving as nothing more than a half hour advertisement for a stupid elf doll meant to spy on kids for Santa). Also, the boy, Taylor, sounds like one who deserves his place on the naughty list, as he wants to call Chippy horrible names like Stinkypants, and only changing after his sisters tattle on him for touching Chippy (because of the belief that touching the elf causes him or her to lose his or her magic, which is lame as the elf is just a doll). I recommend avoiding this commercial in favor of specials with better morals and not selling something.

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)