Ho-ho-huh? “Arthur Christmas” is an animated kiddie comedy that delivers all the wonder you’d expect in a movie about a guy delivering one package. Maybe they should have called it “UPS Man: The Movie.”
Arthur (voiced by James McAvoy) is the younger son of the current reigning Santa (Jim Broadbent), a monarch who plans to hand over the reins to his elder son Steve (Hugh Laurie), a military-style technocrat. The retired former boss, Grandsanta (Bill Nighy), laments the old way of doing business, with eight reindeer instead of 5,000 and an ordinary sleigh instead of a spaceship.
When Arthur learns early Christmas Day that one child (in England) has not received her present, he decides to bring it to her himself, along with Grandsanta and his old-school sleigh. Weird, frantically unfunny gags ensue as the sleigh takes detours through Toronto, Idaho and Africa. Arthur and the old man get chased by lions and mistaken for aliens. Somewhere along the line Grandsanta’s sleigh gets shot down by NATO guided missiles. Periodically, reindeer keep falling off and disappearing. Maybe they were suicidal; if so, I know how they felt.