The Happy Elf

Based on an original song by Harry Connick, Jr.--who also serves as narrator here—The Happy Elf is a brand-new CGI-animated holiday release about a distractingly happy elf named Eubie, who is driving his co-workers and supervisors at Santa's workshop nuts with his overly-ebullient, seemingly ADHD-driven behavior. With Christmas Eve drawing near, the powers-that-be decide to squirrel him away in the Dept. of Naughty and Nice, where his solitary job is to examine the paperwork (“checkin' it twice”) that will determine whether children's stockings are filled with goodies or coal. When Eubie notices that a large proportion of the naughty kids hail from a burg called Bluesville, he slips away to investigate, only to discover a village sandwiched in a narrow ravine between two imposing cliffs, where the local populace is granted only a brief glimpse of the sun as it passes overhead, and are therefore a little on the S.A.D. side (and the kids are a little on the M.A.D. side since school recesses last for only one minute). Eubie has some ideas about how to turn Bluesville around, but before he can fully implement them, he's caught by goons from middle management and dragged back to the North Pole, where he must try to convince a pair of elf friends to join the cause and save Christmas for Bluesville's boys and girls. While this is not quite in the class of such Rankin-Bass classics as Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (which it most closely resembles as Eubie recalls Hermey the elf), The Happy Elf is an amiable enough family film, boasting solid voice work from Rob Paulsen, Carol Kane, Lewis Black, and Mickey Rooney (as Santa), although Connick's laidback lounge-like Christmas songs are decidedly forgettable. DVD extras include an interview with Connick, a full-length storyboard version of the film, a trio of elf games, printable holiday cards, and more. Recommended. Aud: P. (R. Pitman)