No No Noelle
Walt Disney offers up this Christmas season a comedy starring Anna Kendrick that’s dialed to eleven on the cute amplifer. Written and directed by Marc Lawrence (Miss Congeniality, Two Weeks Notice), this is fantasy about the Kringle family and what happens when jolly old Kris Kringle passes away. A mild and inoffensive examination of the assumptions made by a patriarchical world it’s own earnest attempt to avoid offending anyone ultimately undoes this tale.
Anna Kendrick plays Noelle Kringle, daughter of Santa Claus himself. Kendrick is always charming in whatever she does and that is no different here, but Kendrick’s charm can only carry this movie so far. We can see from the get-go that Noelle is impued with a genuine spirit of Christmas, of kindness and unquestioning love. Her brother, Nick Kringle is no saint even if he is a loveable enough schlub but the problem is his training to evenutally replace old Kris Kringle isn’t go as well as it should. It’s clear that Nick’s heart isn’t really in this Christmas thing.
Even in Christmas fantasy films tragedy will beset the players and so does tragedy fall upon the North Pole when Santa Clause dies. Overwhelmed with the stress of not being prepared to replace his father, Nick is clearly panicked. Noelle suggests he take the weekend off and get away and just relax so he’ll be fresh when he returns. A week later and Nick hasn’t returned so the North Pole is freaking out.
The people and elves of the North Pole decided to take a poll and determine that in the absence of less than saintly Nick, a new Santa Claus was going to have to be chosen. The community decides on Noelle’s cousin, the reluctant Gabriel. While it seems obvious that Noelle is best choice to replace her father simply because she so much embodies that spirit more than anyone else in the story, she is wholly unconcerned with whom the town is choosing and much more concerned in finding out what happened to her brother.
Noticing that her magazines that feature photographs and articles about the outside world are out of place, on a hunch she figures Nick is hiding out in Phoenix, Arizona. Determined to fix the problem she believes she created by telling her brother to take a break, she takes the family reindeer driven sleigh and takes along her childhood nanny, Elf Polly played by Shirley McClain. Landing in the middle of a mall in Phoenix, she immediately runs afoul of store management who want her out. A pet store employee who, recognizing that the reindeer and sleigh are a draw, negotiates a deal whre Polly stays beind to tend the reindeer while Noelle looks for her brother.
After finding an ad for a private detective who specializes in missing persons cases, Noelle hires Jake (Kingsley Bin-Adir) to help her find her brother. Upon finding Nick he informs Noelle he’s found Nirvana and has no intention of going back. Noelle leaves Nick in frustration only to receive a message from her mother Mrs. Kringle (Julie Hagerty) who informs her of the problems they have with Gabriel the accounant as the new Santa. Gabriel has made a statistical determination that less than three thousand children qualify as “nice,” the rest have been labeled by the new Santa as “naughty.” Of course, in the short time Noelle has been in Phoenix she too has run into plenty of people she would call “naughty.”
Noelle is discovering she has an almost psychic ability to determine who is naughty and nice. At this point there should be no doubt who is the best qualified to replace the dearly departed Kris Kringle and the remainder of the film entails both Noelle understanding this, and the patriarchical North Pole to accept it. Thankfully there is no speechfying railing against the patriarchical assumptions. This is, after all a sweet film. The modern take on what a Santa Claus should look like and what a Santa Claus can look like is not the films problem at all.
The problem with Noelle is that it’s not all that funny. All the more the shame that it’s written by a very funny screenwriter in the films director Marc Lawrence. Lawrence’s humor has fallen flat before, but here it’s as if an already innocuous screenwriter has found himself under the watchful eye of Disney and even his mild but funny sense of humor had to be tempered with Disney’s whatever it is they think is their brand. While Kendrick is always charming, with Noelle she is burdened with a sweetness that deny’s the audience any of her gleefully sardonic takes she’s come to be know for.
Noelle is still a mildly entertaining film for adults and probably one much more enjoyable for children and so, for the whole family maybe a much more enjoyable experience than if it’s watched alone. Then again, who wants to watch Christmas movies while all alone anyway? If you’ve got no family to watch it with, find some friends to hang out and either laugh with this film or laugh at it. It’s not so bad that it will find itself nominated for Razzies.