"So you think you know how Santa Claus became Father Christmas, eh? Think again."

So declares the opening line of ELF BOWLING THE MOVIE: THE GREAT NORTH POLE ELF STRIKE; and let me just say, what an odd little computer animated movie this was. That sentiment should come as no surprise given this is a movie based on a gimmicky online flash animation bowling game (from seven years ago, no less) that replaced the bowling pins with Santa's elves for a mildly comical effect. This concept seems a challenging one to adapt into a movie. But someone did and what a strange little film they concocted.

Now that opening line wasn't kidding; the very first shot of this little Christmas tale is that of a pirate ship in 400 A.D. cruising the waters of the Pacific. You see Santa Claus started out as a toy-stealing pirate named Captain Santa Maria Klausawitz Kringle. Yeah, a pirate - a pirate with a ridiculously long name who steals children's toys? Part of me was instantly left wondering how much of this intial set-up was due to the producers wanting to capitalize in some way on the popularity of the PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN movies and how much was due to the makers of this thing being heavy ganja smokers. I lean towards believing the latter simply because these people did set out to make a movie based on a modestly-popular online game about bowling with elves. Uwe Boll's insane and yet you haven't heard about him announcing a film based on those online flash games about the Yeti with the spiked bat decapitating penguins for distance, have you? Yet.

Now despite being a South Seas pirate who steals toys, Captain Santa also has a guilty conscience from all the pirating he's done over the years, which is why he gives away a percentage of his stolen toys to orphanages. His surly half-brother, Dingle Kringle - who looks more like he should be Gargamel's kid brother - is rotten to the core and just loves the thrill of stealing toys.

But despite their differences, the two pirating brothers do share another passion: bowling on the poop deck! But a dispute over Dingle's questionable scorekeeping will lead them to sword fight - a sword fight that culminates in the ship's crew having finally had enough of both of them and tossing them overboard into the (suddenly) icy waters where the two immediately freeze into ice cubes and begin floating north.

Next we see an elf named Lex snowboarding. For one brief moment I felt like I was watching a computer-animated Mountain Dew Christmas commercial. Lex comes across the two "popsicle people" and thaws them out using a magical, glowing, laser-shooting orb that looks suspiciously like a bowling ball. Upon getting one look at Captain Santa, Lex screams, "It's him", as he points to a statue of what looks like the traditional Santa Claus in the center of their North Pole village. It is that of the mythical "Whitebeard" who elven prophecy states will one day come to lead the elves. Yep, Santa isn't just Santa; he's the elven messiah. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Jesus.



Dingle can't help himself and attempts to steal the orb, but when his bumbling attempt at thievery goes horribly awry, knocking over a bunch of elves, Captain Santa covers for his half-wit half-brother by proclaiming how this was an accident because of how much they both love "elf bowling". Since they are naive beyond human comprehension, the elves buy into this insane explanation.

Despite plotting with his brother to rob the fun-loving, toy-making, dimwitted elves blind, it takes all of about a minute for Lex to sell Captain Santa on this Christmas concept he's just come up with. Since Santa likes giving away toys to deserving children and the elves already in the business of manufacturing actual mountains full of toys for no particular reason, why not get charitable? A few magical orb blasts later and Santa becomes Santa and Christmas becomes Christmas. Jesus who? Not in this universe, bucko.

And everyone at the North Pole loves to bowl, whether it be ordinary bowling or Santa's special brand of elf bowling, in which ten elves dressed like members of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band substitute for bowling pins so that their beloved bearded lord and savior can clobber them with bowling balls for sport. Did Papa Smurf ever physically abuse his people like this - I think not.

To present day (I think - they first say 1400 AD but we'll soon see an airplane), Santa and Dingle, both gifted with elven immortality, live at the North Pole; though since Santa just picked up a hot young elven trophy wife because of her excellent streudel (Insert your own dirty joke here), Dingle's sleeping on the couch is starting to cramp their style. Santa does not, however, seem to have much of an issue with evil Dingle having spent the past almost-century committing crimes and causing plagues and famines around the world.



Being told to move out is the last straw and so, Dingle, with the help of a pair of bumbling wannabe mobster penguins, sets about to stick it to his brother by challenging him to a winner takes all game of elf bowling. Santa, the compulsive gambler he is, accepts, and would have lost too had Dingle not been disqualified for cheating. Dingle now ups his game to acts of terrorism and sabotage designed to turn Santa and the unionized elves against one another. He eventually succeeds in replacing his brother and moving the whole Christmas toy operation to... Fiji.

Now you're probably wondering why Fiji. Well guess what small island nation helped produce this movie? Yep, the South Pacific island nation that gave us Fiji Water and "Superfly" Jimmy Snuka is now getting into the computer animation racket with their first export: ELF BOWLING THE MOVIE: IF THEY WEREN'T WILLING TO PUT THE FULL TITLE ON THE BOX THEN I REFUSE TO TYPE THE WHOLE DAMN THING OUT AGAIN.

To their credit, the animation is perfectly fine. It's nowhere near the level of Pixar (Duh!) but I'd put it at the higher end of low budget computer animation. The biggest knock against it being occasional jerkiness and mouth movements never looking quite right. Still, the biggest knock against the movie as a whole is most definitely not the quality of the animation.

For starters, why do the makers of animated Christmas movies always insist on including musical numbers? Some truly dreadful and unnecessary in the scheme of things song and dance numbers pop up along the way. Thankfully, they're few, brief, and far between. There's just nothing catchy about the tunes or the lyrics and the voice actors singing are painfully off-key. Two of these songs are sung by Dingle Kringle, voiced by Tom Kenny, who you may know as the voice of Spongebob Squarepants. The voice he's doing here is perfectly suitable for a ratty scoundrel of a man, but for song and dance numbers - ears bleed.



There's also something a tad questionable about having the one black elf practically talking jive in his introductory scene. Sad to see racial stereotypes alive and well even amongst the elven people of the North Pole.

Much of the humor - both of the slapstick and topical "SHREK" variety - falls flat, the musical numbers are indeed terrible, the whole production fails to capture any of the magic that makes the Christmas season special, and even at 77-minutes it feels like something that's been stretched out beyond reason. Again, we are talking about a CGI-animated Christmas cartoon based upon a flash animation bowling game.

On the flight to Fiji Dingle will hook up with a scheming capitalist harpy who may be the most cleavage-displaying redhead to appear in a kiddy cartoon since Jessica Rabbit. Once they get to Fiji it turns out a bullwhip-cracking Dingle is setting up a toy-making sweatshop and begins using brainwashing techniques to turn the elves into his subservient slaves for all eternity, while his top heavy hotty-in-crime advises him to begin charging the children of the world for their Christmas toys.

And thus FAO Schwarz was born! Or not.



Santa, Lex, and a Fijian native chief who looks disturbingly like a chunky Polynesian Ron Jeremy (I kid you not!) join forces to save Christmas. And after doing just that, Santa, with no other reason for him to do so other than having a serious gambling problem, accepts Dingle's challenge to a Christmas Eve elf bowling rematch for all the marbles. At this point, if I were an elf I'd be slapping my forehead and looking into setting up a North Pole branch of Gamblers Anonymous. And guess what...? Due to the lack of creativity on the part of the writer, the contest results in the exact same victory by DQ as earlier. Hooray! Christmas is saved once and for all - by technicality!

I fully realize I'm far past being the target audience for this film but I still can't imagine too many kids being all that entertained by ELF BOWLING THE MOVIE. It feels like the sort of Christmas toon you'd watch as a kid and then forget about until you're an adult when you stumble across it again and quickly come to realize why you'd forgotten about it in the first place. You know that feeling, don't you?

Outside of the strangeness of the initial set-up and a tiny handful of mildly amusing silliness, the plotting and pacing is quite lackluster for what's supposed to be a kiddy cartoon. I can't fault the screenwriter too much because... Look, the poor SOB was given the assignment of crafting a full-length movie script around a tiny flash animation bowling game with a silly gimmick to it. Talk about someone in need of a Christmas miracle.

Still, all in all, ELF BOWLING THE MOVIE: THE GREAT NORTH POLE ELF STRIKE (so much for my earlier vow) is harmless enough that I wouldn't compare watching it to getting a lump of coal for Christmas. I would, however, akin it to be about as exciting as unwrapping a Christmas present that turns out to be a shirt from grandma. I think we all know that feeling too.



Just in case you really did think I was kidding with that Ron Jeremy comment.