Elf Bowling the Movie: The Great North Pole Elf Strike
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Elf Bowling the Movie: The Great North Pole Elf Strike is a 2007 American-Fijian-South Korean Christmas computer-animated comedy film which was based on the video game of the same name.
Plot
Santa and his brother, Dingle, are pirates roaming the open sea. After getting kicked off their ship by their own crew, they become trapped in ice and don't thaw out until they reach the north pole. There, they meet elves who recognize Santa as the prophesied "white beard" and ask him to lead their factory. The elves already had been making toys, but they didn't have anything to do with them, so they kept them in storage. Santa had the idea of giving the toys to the world's children, and thus, Christmas is born. After 600 years, Santa becomes sick of his brother Dingle loafing around in his apartment and insists that he leave. This upsets Dingle, so he plots against Santa in order to take over Christmas from him. He challenges Santa to a game of Elf Bowling, but after the elves discover he cheated, his plan is foiled. He then tricks Santa into getting frozen and writes a fake note about how Santa hates the elves and is leaving. This upsets the elves, and Dingle uses the opportunity to make them follow him on a trip to Fiji. After Santa's wife finds him, Santa must get back to the elves in order to save Christmas. While Dingle hypnotized the elves, Santa figured out a way to reverse the process, thwarting Dingle's plan and saving Christmas.
Why This Film Is a Triple Bogey That Pooped in the Peanut Barrel
- To get the presents out of Santa's sack, this movie is based off the Elf Bowling series, a game that's known for being bad. Why would anyone do that?!
- Desperate, almost insulting disconnection to the Santa Claus mythology, from having Santa's favorite food to be strudel to having him be portrayed as a Pirate Captain for his true identity in a few thousand years from the past, according to a transition scene during the film.
- Portraying Saint Nicholas as a Pirate Captain makes absolutely no sense at all since Christmas dates back to at least 336 AD, and maritime piracy as known didn't even start until the 14th Century, or the 8th if we're including vikings?
- Poor humor which heavily focuses on slapstick, like Dingle slapping the penguins for fish, or toilet humor, like the elves making the elbow's farts, to Saint Nicholas' infamous "Who pooped in the peanut barrel?!?" line during the intro of the film.
- Poor connection to the source material (what little there is anyway). In fact, the original game already had a story that was completely different from the movie's story, which makes no sense.
- Mediocre CGI animation. Everyone looks like they're made of clay, and their movements are uncanny to say the least due to the use of motion capture. This film came out in 2007 by the way, and previous CGI animated films (e.g Meet the Robinsons, Shrek the Third and Surf's Up!) look ten times as better then Elf Bowling The Movie: The Great North Pole Elf Strike.
- The character movement is extremely awkward, floaty and slow, which makes it look like something out of an early GameCube and/or PlayStation 2 game.
- Dingle constantly cheats throughout the film and barely even has a character to begin with.
- It introduces some of the main characters way too late in the movie.
- Both the overall general and the tone of Elf Bowling The Movie: The Great North Pole Elf Strike is very inconsistent and super confusion, as it has no idea as to both what kind of movie it wants to be and this movie wants to be for:
- Even tho this film is based off of the Elf Bowling franchise, it is barely in the movie and feels more like a Christmas Movie.
- Despite this film being aimed to kids, it has way, way, WAY too many Inappropriate/dark moments and far to many Innuendo Jokes.
- While this film tries too hard to be for teenagers/adults, it has too many campy and cartoony moments.
- Awful voice acting, even from veteran actors like Tom Kenny (SpongeBob, Talking Hank, Dog from CatDog, the Mayor of Townsville, the Ice King, Wayne Cramp), Jill Talley (Karen, Lisa Dubois, Rita Loud) and Joe Alaskey, which is filled with pirate lingo.
- Though to be fair, the two main characters used to be pirates themselves. Unfortunately, that doesn't make the quality any less bad.
- Another crucial plot point is a magic orb that has powers that are usable, but they happen at completely random.
- Numerous plot holes, which include:
- What do the Pirates have a peanut barrel?
- Why is Dingle fudging the Figures if he's not getting anything out of this?
- Why is Santa's pet Parrot the one who gives away the scam even tho he's Santa's pet?
- Why are the Pirates in the Northern area? They usually live in warm Tropical Areas.
- Santa not being able to produce enough toys if not for Dingle hypnotizing the elves.
- Why are there penguins living in the North Pole? Most penguins live in the South Pole.
- Why would Santa want to have a rematch agents Dingle even tho he should know that Dingle is gonna cheat again?
- Why does no one(not even Santa) realize that Santa is holding a freaking bomb???
- How does the Chef know that Dingle was the one the cheated before?
- How did the penguins adding the villain get recorded? And also why is there a Wide Screen television?
- There are lots of really out-of-nowhere moments, like two giant walking and talking moai heads that look identical to each other and speak in surfer lingo.
- This movie has a lot of moments were a scene will happen in 10 minutes but then are never mention again, making Elf Bowling The Movie: The Great North Pole Elf Strike feel more like cash of cartoon episodes mashed together, rather then a full-fledged movie.
- Stupid and annoying songs, such as the elf introduction song and Dingle's song, in which he glorifies slavery!
- False advertising for two reasons:
- The design of Santa on the poster looks nothing like that shown in the movie.
- There are six penguins on the poster, but only two actually appear in the entire movie.
- It first came out on October 3rd, which makes no sense because that's way too early for a Christmas-themed movie, and Christmas isn't celebrated until December.
- In one of the scenes, they made the only black elf a rapper and one-note character. Seriously?
- Despite this being a Elf Bowling film, it feels somewhat generic when compared to the previous Elf Bowling media. It's just another run-of-the-mill Bowling Movie but with Elf Bowling skinned onto it for profit. You can replace Santa and the Elf Bowling Pins with different animated characters and the movie would stay the same.
- The very infamous and out-of-nowhere scene were during Santa's bowling, a neon sign that is a parody of the Budweiser logo can be spotted, which is a brand of alcohol. How did this get past the censors in a PG-rated family film?
Redeeming Qualities That Are a Strike and Very Merry Christmas
- Despite how very Inappropriate it is, the "Who pooped in the peanut barrel?!?" line is actually quite funny.
- Dingle's "Mutiny" song is pretty catchy.
- The design of the workshop is very unique and original.
Reception
The movie was panned by critics and audiences alike for its inappropriate-for-a-children's-movie humor and nonsensical plot. It has a 1.9/10 rating on IMDb.com, and only 28% of Google users liked this movie.
Cancelled Sequel
A Sequel title Elf Bowling 2: The Great Halloween Pumpkin-Heist was in development, but due to the films poor reviews, it was scrapped.
Videos
External Links
Elf Bowling The Movie: The Great North Pole Elf Strike at the Internet Movie Database
Elf Bowling The Movie: The Great North Pole Elf Strike on Rotten Tomatoes
Elf Bowling The Movie: The Great North Pole Elf Strike on Letterboxd
Comments
- Bad media
- Animated films
- Holiday films
- Comedy films
- 2000s films
- Reviewed by The Nostalgia Critic
- Computer-animated films
- Christmas films
- "It's made for girls/boys"
- "It's made for kids"
- Based on video games
- Adventure films
- Films with content inappropriate for their target audiences
- Direct-to-video films
- Films with cancelled/scrapped sequels
- Internet memes
- Gross-out films
- Musical films
- Korean films
- Featured on TV Tropes' So Bad, It's Horrible