Iain Fraser

Do they deliberately make the actors, especially the nuns, speak in such a silly convoluted and stilted manner? Nobody talks like that. Is it bad acting or bad directing?. It’s not realistic and is not necessary. The ridiculous over representation of disabled and ethnic characters is not realistic either. It smacks of 1984 style rewriting of history. You can’t pretend that the same values existed then that exist today. You may as well make the people sprout wings and fly, for all the realism that exists in this show. It’s fluffy pap and badly acted pap at that. Would it kill broadcasters to show realism for once?

The film doesn’t really land for me. The odd plot twist has been discussed elsewhere, but for me the main character shouting her lines is irritating, to say nothing of the sugary multiculturalism that seems unnecessary and frankly somewhat cowardly by the director. They make the characters Muslim, but dare not make them ‘too Muslim’, I guess for fear of putting off a white audience. If this had been made by a white director, he or she would have faced criticism for misrepresentation, I’m quite sure. East is East tackled the subject without resorting to this sugar coating, and it seems that director here lacked the cojones to follow suit. For all the realism in this film, you may as well have introduced flying space zombies. At least we’d know not to give it credibility. I guess the newspaper people will follow the ‘emperors new clothes’ line as with most Asian mash-up films, and we’ll all pretend everything is super dooper. But no, not for me..

Awful film that never hits the right notes, and isn’t even enjoyably bad. How do they get away with a blatant rip off of the small person mistaken as an elf from the film ‘Elf’? Broadbent isn’t funny or lovable. Spall’s chemistry with his supposed son is zero. The flatulent reindeer gags just stink. What were they thinking with this one? I don’t know, and I don’t think they do either. Watch Elf again. Even after a hundred viewings it’s still funnier this garbage.