YMMV / Elf

• Adorkable: Buddy is a friendly but socially inept and accident-prone Manchild whose goal is to make others happy.
• Alternate Character Interpretation: Is Miles Finch an arrogant Jerkass or merely a Consummate Professional shaped by a life of discrimination? Buddy calling him an "elf" is obviously not intended to be malicious but it's somewhat understandable why Miles would get angry, even if physically attacking him might seem too much. It's also confirmed that Miles' ideas are genuinely good and his books are successful, though he does mislead the other writers in the meeting.
• Aluminum Christmas Trees: The Central Park Rangers are a real law enforcement agency, and the "controversial" actions they took at the Simon & Garfunkel concert, though never specified, also happened. Apparently even the filmmakers were unaware of this, as Jon Favreau actually states in the DVD commentary that "Obviously there's no Central Park Rangers. We made them up."
• And You Thought It Would Fail: Will Ferrell himself had his doubts. He's reported that when he was running around New York in a silly elf costume, he feared that this might be the end of his career.
• Awesome Music: There's a quite few of these in the animated version.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment:
  • Break-dancing in the mailroom to the Tag Team song "Whoomp! (There It Is)". Must be what happens when you get a lifelong elf good and sauced.
  • The Central Park Rangers get introduced during the climax as faceless goons to threaten and chase after the sleigh purely to give the climax some tension. The reporter says they have a history of police brutality, and that's all we learn about them. They could easily be removed and the film would lose nothing.
• Ensemble Dark Horse
  • Mr. Narwhal. He's actually voiced by Jon Favreau.
  • Arctic Puffin also has his fair share of fans.
  • Miles Finch. Peter Dinklage is really good at playing a character who's a total asshole.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Will Ferrell building a giant LEGO city.
  • This wouldn't be the last time that a Will Ferrell character would bring about a workaholic man's redemption on Christmas Eve.
• Hype Backlash: Despite becoming a Christmas Classic for many people and still seeing merch for the movie being sold in stores even today around Christmas time, there are also a lot of people who can't comprehend how it became a Christmas classic, seeing it as another run of the mill mediocre Will Ferrell comedy among his many other films.
• I Am Not Shazam: The main character is named Buddy, not Elf. He's also not an elf, but rather a human raised by elves.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • The Gimbels manager. He's a bit of a stick-in-the-mud and work-obsessed, but like everyone else there, he just wants to do his job and get through the holidays, and it's implied he's already on thin ice as it is. You can't blame him for getting fed up with Buddy making things more complicated. The ending implies that he and Buddy have since made peace (enough to get the restraining order he'd slapped Buddy with lifted) when Buddy reads aloud a Christmas story to a large audience of children at the Santa's Village in Gimbels.
  • The Mall Santa at Gimbels. He's just trying to do his job for the kids, and he has little patience for Buddy's antics. One can't fault him for snapping after Buddy removes his beard.
  • Miles Finch beats up Buddy for (albeit unknowingly) making fun of his disability to his face, something he's probably had to deal with his entire life.
• Memetic Mutation: Like most Will Ferrell movies, practically the entire script has wound up on a t-shirt.
  • All together now: "SANTAAAAA!!!! OH MY GOD!! I know him! I know him!"
  • "But the children love the books!"
  • "Ginormous!"
  • "You sit on a throne of lies."
  • "I'm a cotton-headed ninnymuggins."^note Gasp!!
  • "Not now, Arctic Puffin!"
  • "Bye, Buddy! Hope you find your dad!" And you have to do it in that goofy voice.
  • Try whispering to someone nowadays without either of you (or a third person joining in) saying "I like to whisper too!"
  • "Son of a nutcracker!"
  • "Francisco. That's fun to say."
  • "Buddy the Elf. What's your favorite color?"
  • "I love to smile! Smiling's my favorite!" ^note Make work your favorite, that's your favorite, OK?
  • "GAY PEOPLE!" ^note  This YTPMV set to Jevil's theme that features the Gimbels Manager started taking off late 2021, with it exploding in popularity around the holidays. Following it, the movie became a popular source for YTPMVs, especially the mall scene.
• Narm Charm: The movie runs on it. It's not only yet another story about rediscovering the true meaning of Christmas, but also the most sincere, loving homage to classic Christmas specials from the '50s and '60s. And while some of it is played for irony, the movie otherwise believes so strongly in its story and messages that it comes off as 100% genuinely heartwarming. The scene of everyone in New York singing "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town" is a prime example: on paper, it sounds corny as all get out, but not one character participating looks like as if they aren't thoroughly enjoying themselves. It also makes a lot of sense if you remember that not only is the film a story that Papa Elf is telling the viewer but that Buddy eventually turned his story into a picture book, which obviously plays up some of the more sentimental moments for entertainment.
• Nausea Fuel:
  • Buddy peels a piece of gum off a subway entrance stair railing. And chews it. After Santa told him not to^note Santa told him not to eat the gum from the ground.
  • The breakfast Buddy fixes himself, which consists of spaghetti with maple syrup, marshmallows, Pop-Tarts, and other sugary things. Will Ferrell later revealed that he got migraines from eating all of that sugar.
  • The gnome burping and troll farting in the opening scene at the North Pole.
• One-Scene Wonder:
  • Brenda McDonald, embodying every sweet, helpless little-old-lady and kind-hearted, heartbroken nun in movie history.
    But the children love the books!
  • Peter Dinklage's scene was mentioned in a lot of critics' reviews as being the most memorable sequence of the film. Even those who dislike the movie agree that his scene is great.
  • While not as noticeable, Jon Favreau follows his usual tradition with his scene as the doctor who gives Buddy the finger-prick.
  • Mr. Narwhal, who like the doctor is played by Jon Favreau.
  • Artie Lang as Gimbels Mall Santa. He does indeed sit on a throne of lies.
• Questionable Casting: Will Ferrell in a kid's movie; James Caan for a Christmas film; and Ed Asner as Santa^note And believe it or not, that actually wasn't the first time. Even Roger Ebert was surprised by how well that turned out.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Buddy befriends Lord Tirek in the mailroom.
  • Peter Dinklage (Miles Finch) would go on to become much better known as Tyrion Lannister.
• Values Dissonance:
  • While Buddy's Accidental Pervert scene of him singing with Jovie while, unbeknownst to him, is naked in the shower can get a pass on Buddy just being that naive and socially inept, it would be a lot harder to downplay Jovie's discomfort at the assumption that someone was preying on her in an age where sexual misconduct is taken far more seriously.
  • In her first scene, Deb is overheard talking on the phone with someone who wants her to help declaw their cats. In the years since this movie came out, declawing has come to be seen as a form of animal abuse, as it requires mutilating a cat's topmost phalanges (the equivalent of cutting off the tips of a human's fingers so their nails stop growing) and would not be discussed so passively, either in a movie or real life.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: The North Pole scenes feature some truly amazing effects, both optical (the Rankin-Bass style stop-motion characters, courtesy of the Chiodo Brothers, interacting with the humans) and in-camera (the scenes of Buddy interacting with the elves are a masterful combination of forced perspective sets and child body doubles). Not only do they look amazing, but it makes the few uses of CGI, namely a few shots of Santa's sleigh flying through New York, all the more impressive. Jon Favreu reportedly had to fight tooth and claw for New Line Cinema to allow him to make the film this way, and it clearly paid off.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: Believe it or not, the Broadway musical version is considerably more adult than the movie, with an increase in language, sexual innuendos, and double entrendre^note Some critics are saying that it's more of a grown-up show anyway, and that the kids would only be interested in the scenery.
• The Woobie: Buddy has no idea how to function in society, and most people treat him like a pariah, none the least of which is his father, whom Buddy travels hundreds of thousands of miles to meet and wants nothing to do with him at first. This is best exemplified when Buddy mistakes Miles for one of Santa's elves: every question he asks genuinely sounds like an insult, and Buddy has no way of knowing.

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