That was an excellent one.

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

Absolutely the worst movie.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

I watched this film last Christmas and I was rolling my eyes cartoon style. It wasn't just the mediocre animation, the poor character development, the poor narrative, the silly jokes or some preposterous scenes. To me, the main sin of the movie is that it lacks what any movie about Xmas for children should have: true Xmas spirit and true heart. The premises of the story would have been nice enough to make a nice short, but the short is stretched unnecessarily into a soulless movie. Christmas is not adventure and gadgets, even though I love my gadgets and adventure. No Xmas spirit into this movie, no matter how many gimmicks, lions, spaceships and adventure you put into it and how many Santas you count in it, there is no soul. The story lost me after the first five minutes. Silly me, I kept watching, so I got a strong anti-Arthur feeling, and I thought that the Grinch should have stolen Arthur's Christmas. Ho ho ho.

As the film title suggests, this is a festive film, dedicated to that of Christmas. And it definitely takes on a unique approach to the concept of Santa and gift-giving. With a military like procedure, the elves act as soldiers under the command of Steve, to safely deliver presents without exposure. However, this is jeopardized when a child is missed, and chaos breaks loose.The animation is cute and the colors are very complementary to the tone of the film. The characters however, are too stock like and have very stereotypical shapes; the stick, the oval, and the upside down triangle. A bit too much cartoon-like for my taste, with the emphasis on shape matching personality.The voice acting is pretty good. I couldn't tell that it was James McAvoy, and I think he might have altered his voice to match his character. Some of the voices of the elves are a little too squeaky for my taste, but they certainly match - once again, the size of their respectable characters.As for the plot, it isn't anything outstanding. While the idea behind having a story centered on the son of Santa helps to bring a new perspective on things, I didn't really like how Santa was depicted. Logically, Santa would have been doing this for decades, but it was depicted that he didn't really know what he was doing. Also, the military take on delivering presents might have been a cool idea, but it implies a sort of invasion and detracts some of the warmth that is associated with the event. It doesn't help that this is a truly patriarchal film, with Mrs.Santa doing predominantly housekeeping, and Bryony having special 'gift- wrapping' ability. Overall, it's a fun film to watch, but it won't be my go to Christmas movie.

'Arthur Christmas' is one of the many modern Christmas films that reviewers claim will be the 'next festive classic' that we'll watch every year. And maybe for some it will be, but for me it's just another good Christmas film, not a classic.It has its moments. Aardman bring all of their normal charm to the proceedings, and you can't deny they've assembled a very good voice cast. But there isn't enough story to hang all the jokes onto, and the story that there is feels stretched. Arthur sets off to save the day, it's a very long hour before he does.For young children I think this film reveals too much about the myth of Santa, and the fact he doesn't 'actually' deliver the gifts (relying on elves to do the work) may upset some.Its got a nice message, it's got a good heart, but much like a nicely decorated present, there's not much inside.

As a huge fan of Aardman, I could not wait to see Arthur Christmas and I was not disappointed. Christmas is also one of my favourite holidays.It had a hilarious story about how Santa Claus works around that time of year to get all the presents to the children in time. It had excellent voice acting with James McAvoy as Arthur Claus, Hugh Laurie as Steven "Steve" Claus, Bill Nighy as Grand Santa, Jim Broadbent as Malcolm "Santa" Claus, Imelda Staunton as Margaret Claus and Ramona Marquez as Gwen Hines to name a few. It also had great animation, Aardman used computer animation instead of stop- motion clay animation, nice to see a style, lovable characters, a fantastic score by Harry Gregson-Williams, and the chemistry between Arthur and Gwen was really heartwarming.If you have not seen this movie, go ahead and watch it right now. A must watch!