A Boy Called Christmas (2021)
I wanted a pic with the most important characters. Here they are. I wasn’t originally going to watch this tonight, but I was at my parents’ house, and this was the safest thing to put on without anyone complaining. My dad and brother went grocery shopping while my mom and I watched this.
So the central plot is framed as a bedtime story being told by Aunt Ruth (Maggie Smith) to her niece Andrea (Isabella O’Sullivan) and nephews Andrew (Eden Lawrence) and Moppet (Ayomide Garrick) while she is babysitting them on Christmas Eve because their dad Matt (Joel Fry) has to work. The kids are miserable and want nothing to do with Aunt Ruth, stories, or Christmas because they’re grieving the loss of their mother. We don’t get any details, but it seems recent.
Aunt Ruth tells the story of a boy named Nikolas (Henry Lawfull) who lives in a remote part of Finland with his father Joel (Michiel Huisman). His mother has also passed away due to a bear attack. Nikolas is a sweet boy who loves his turnip doll and hearing his mom’s story about Elfhelm. Elfhelm is a magical village of magical elves in the far north. Nikolas also cares about animals because he saves a mouse from his dad, cares for the mouse and names him Miika.
The king (Jim Broadbent) offers a large reward to anyone who can bring him something to spark hope in the country because times have been very hard lately. Nikolas is unbothered by any of this because he has love, but Joel wants to do better for them. So Joel calls in Aunt Carlotta (Kristen Wiig) to stay with Nikolas while he and some other men search for Elfhelm. Aunt Carlotta is… unpleasant. Cruel. Needs intensive therapy. But Nikolas doesn’t leave her until he finds a secret map to Elfhelm which he must get to his father immediately!
But before Nikolas and Joel are reunited, Nikolas meets a wounded reindeer he names Blitzen. Blitzen travels with Nikolas and Miika for the rest of the movie. Right as Nikolas gives up on finding Elfhelm or his father, Father Topo (Toby Jones) and Little Noosh (Indica Watson) show up to help him. But Nikolas is baffled by how much Elfhelm has changed from the story he grew up with. An elf child named Little Kip (Rishi Kuppa) has been kidnapped by humans, so Nikolas is not welcome at all. He gets locked up with The Truth Pixie (Zoe Colletti) who is a real treasure of a character. She helps him get out of Elfhelm to save Little Kip and help the elves be happy again. She also likes to explode things, including living creatures. I love her.
I refuse to give away anything else because this is a fantastic movie. The score was well done. The acting was superb, especially for how many child actors there were. There was like one moment where I thought, “ok that’s a lot” but my mom called it heart wrenching, so it must be effective for some people. There’s a few things that never get explained in the film that bother me, primarily what the custom of Christmas is for the elves because the holiday apparently didn’t exist for humans before Nikolas. Overall, a solid 4 stars.