Bowling for Bullcrap
Film Brokers International: 2007
Christmas time has reared its snowy head once again, and that means it's time once more to look at some holly jolly horribleness from the realm of the animated. I've talked of nutcrakers and care bears, talking snowmen, and ponies on twinkle wish adventures. I thought I had really looked at some stinkers. But it turns out that I had only scratched the surface of the coal filled stocking when I saw this DVD. I mean, Elf Bowling: The Movie? It's like the crap gods above were tempting me with the wafting odors of pure fecal delights.
So, what the hell is Elf Bowling? It was a computer game, where you played as Santa Claus who, you guessed, fired birds from a slingshot to kill pigs. Wait, wrong game, but the point remains. It was a bowling game where you bowled elves. It gained popularity, and there were plenty of updated versions of the game. Even going so far as to add ports to the Gameboy advance and the Nintendo DS, much to the dismay of critics, and anyone foolish enough to buy it.
However, despite the simplicity of something like bowling elves, the creators felt that they clearly had the next big franchise on their hands, and that its popularity was enough to warrant a series of animated films. No, seriously. There was a sales promo for the first film, claiming it to be bigger than Jesus. Claiming it's gonna hit the big screen, and that USA Today calls it, and I'm not BS'ing you, "A Phenomenon". Hell, the sales promo full on promotes a sequel in the works that never got made. Nor did this even touch the theater.
So, let's see if this truly strikes out. Let's review this thing.
We open the story with the origin of Santa Claus (voiced by Joe Alaskey), who in this version is a pirate, who steals toys from kids to sell them right back to other kids. Santa (who's full name is Santa Maria Clauswitz-Kringle), ask his crew the age old question of "who pooped in the peanut barrel?" Because you know, nothing says Christmas like bowel movements. But it turns out that Santa's not a complete prick as he sets baskets of toys out to sea to be picked up by poor children. Let's just hope those poor children live close to the water and all. Middle of the land can go screw.
Santa feels it's time for a little game of nine-pin, and calls for his brother, and film antagonist, Dingle Kringle, who's voiced by... Tom Kenny? Thy actually got decent voice talents in this film? I do so many of these cheap, horrible animated films I was expecting the "best" we'd get is the 4kids voice actors. Santa seems to be a proficient ball holder, as he easily beats his crew. When the crew accuses Santa and Dingle of cheating, the two blame each other, and engage in a sudden sword fight, until they're both knocked off the ship into the icy waters below.
"Well, this is going to be 80 minutes of fun, I can tell already."
After cooling down, Santa is introduced to the elves, who show him the North Pole. Santa claims to be grateful, but considering he's a plundering pirate of pure prickishness, he and Dingle claim to be shoe salesman.. The elves, being idiots, buy it, because they think he's whitebeard. They even show the duo to their toy factory. And since these two are god awful at hiding they're intentions, Dingle even says out loud that he intends to steal the toys, which Santa counters with clearly meaning "giving them to kiddies". And they buy it because stupidity.
Turns out that the elves make the toys, play with them, and since they don't think to just recycle these toys or trade them with other elves, they just stuff ten trillion of them inside the mountains. When elves start to march in place, Dingle tries to grab Lex's ball (get used to these ball puns, kids), and drop the ball, literally bowling the elves over.
There, we got our titular elf bowling, can we end this now?
But it turns out these elves have no problem being abused and knocked about by their white bearded overlord. We also get more of Santa's plan to trick Lex into giving him the ball so he can conjure a ship, steal the toys, and get revenge on their crew. And they once again say all this OUT FRIGGING LOUD! But nobody's paying attention anyway as the elves are welcoming their new leader with... armpit farts? Sure. Okay.
Santa is then introduced to pastry chef/love interest Grizelda, who welcomes the fat man with some strudel, which, as it turns out, is Santa's favorite dish. That's all well and good...
But it sure as hell ain't the people's strudel.
But nevermind all that crap, we have Dingle talking to... a mafioso Penguin?
"Sure. Why not?"
Santa is still completely focused on his revenge, but Lex gives him the idea to only work one day a year delivering toys. With that news, as well as free room, board, and strudel, Santa is down for the task. Lex introduces him to the main players of this elf association. Wrappelstiltskin (friggin' really?), a black elf that raps (of course he does, why wouldn't he?), Bagger, who made a magic bag that can hold 10 billion toys, and Candle, who... makes candles? No, he's in charge of entertainment. Lex makes a sleigh for Santa to deliver the toys, and this leads to, of course, a song. Because we're almost 20 minutes into this film, and I was praying that meant we were safe. How foolish I am.
As sung by the gravelly voice of Bagger, he tells Santa that good productivity and all of the magic from Lex's ball requires the elves to be happy to fill up the... ugh... Bum-o-meter, and he tells Santa to sign a contract. This is nearly Gottfried levels of bad in terms of the singing, and it has to be the least catchy song of all time as none of the lines are memorable, mostly being just an off key mess. Simply put, don't piss the elves off, or they'll go on strike. there. I saved the audience over two minutes of ear pain.
So, we get a bunch of exposition about how Santa and Dingle would be given immortality, and how he would be good to his word by doing the Christmas job for centuries, while Dingle was still a piratin' prick. He even weds Grizelda. And keeping with the title of the film that hasn't focused on much bowling, we cut to 1400 years later where Santa decides to finally give the elves their own bowling alley.
Santa is even tired of his freeloading brother (though his fear of losing the tase of Grizelda's oh-so-godly strudel is the real key factor), and throws out Dingle. Dingle later assembles his henchman of mafia penguins (still blows my mind) that he plans to try and take Christmas from Santa. Or you could, you know, not do that, and stop being such a douche. But there's like over a half hour left of this crud, so I guess any motivation is good motivation. And how does he plan to take over Christmas? By bowling of course.
Even the Dude, Walter, and Donny (god rest his soul) would be sick of all this bowling.
After some really painful puns, we get to the elf bowling match with Christmas on the Line. Dingle has his pengoons cheat for him to give him the advantage over Santa and win, until he is caught in his cheating ways. There, Dingle's defeated, and Santa keeps Christmas. Clearly that must means the movie's over.
*sees that there's still over 40 minutes left*
You know what we haven't had in a while? A song, of course. And it's the villain song, which should be good. But, if the last song was any indication, this song will of course be god awful, which is is. At least Tom Kenny is a bit of a better singer. He sings about loving a mutiny. Their plan is to sabotage the candy cane machine, and blow up the place with gun powder, which they pin Lex for. Lex quits, causing some dissension in the elf crew. Dingle then tricks Santa into going to the cracking ice during a storm to save Lex, as he steals Santa's job.
The pengoons sabotage the toy factory, blowing it to smithereens in the process. Santa gets frozen again (for some reason), and Dingle and the pengoons trash the place. And to finish the job, Dingle places a fake note claiming that Santa hates them all. The elves, finally pissed at the whole situation, go on strike. Dingle tells them that they should set up shop in a new location. How does he do that, take a wild guess. Through song of freaking course! Long story short, he tells the elves that they should open shop in Fiji.
And as if one villain to this film wasn't enough, we get a 2nd in a floozy named Veronica trying to horn in on Dingle's plan to take over Christmas. Dingle and the elves arrive on Fiji where they're greeted by the chief of Fiji, followed by... oh for the love of the Little Drummer Boy... ANOTHER SONG! Meanwhile, Santa is eventually rescued by Grizelda. The jolly elf is not happy with how he handled things, until Grizelda essentially inspires him to grab his balls and get his elves back. Santa sets off to finish things with Dingle once and for all.
So Dingle's plan is to lure all the elves (except Lex) into his sweat shop and hypnotize them. He steals Lex's ball, and sends him flying into the chief's hut, as he and Veronica plan to bill the kids for the toys they deliver. We then learn that, get this, the magic never came from Lex's bowling ball, but Lex had the power all along.
Who saw that coming, huh? Huh? HUH? HUUUUH?
Oh thank god this is almost over.
Santa arrives in Fiji, just as Dingle notices the situation at hand. He needs help stopping Santa and stealing the sleigh, so he conjures up.
A pair of surfer speaking rock men?
After Dingle zaps Santa with the orb, he has his stone dudes bury him in the sand, instead of, you know, crushing him under their massive stone girth. They also don't believe Santa's a cultural icon, even when Santa tells them to use google.
Clearly he takes his search engine tips from Dr. Crumb.
Lex finds Santa buried in the sand, and the two patch things up for being so easily duped by Dingle. This moves the bodacious rock men, who free Santa.
With the help of the chief, they manage to distract one of the stone dudes with a woman made out of fire so they can get into the building. They literally reverse the hypnosis by reversing the giant hypno wheel, snapping the elves out of their spell. Santa and Lex manage to tell the elves that... get this... Dingle was the bad guy all along. Well who knew? However, they forgot about Dingle still having the magic ball. Grizelda shows up, and brawls with Veronica in the least interesting catfight of all time. Veronica is defeated by, of course, the magic of strudel.
Dingle almost falls out of the sleigh as it's high in the air, but Santa saves his worthless spine. This prompts Dingle to challenge Santa to another bowling match because, you know, it's not like he's already lost. Santa accepts, but this time it's Super Elf Bowling, which is pretty much the same as the regular elf bowling, only with coconuts. Dingle must have got three dunks in a row on NBA Jam because his ball's on fire, as he lands a strike. He is in full cheating form again, as he switches Santa's coconut ball with a bomb. It doesn't blow Santa up, but blows up in front of the pins, which doesn't knock them down. Looks like Dingle wins again, only until he's proven to have cheated once again. Santa wins once and for frigging all, and Dingle ends up flying to the Moon on a firework because punishment I guess.
And so the movie ends with Santa and Lex riding on their Christmas toy delivery, as Lex fixes up the toy factory in the North Pole on the way home.
And that was Elf Bowling: The Movie. It wasn't as bad as something like Bubsy or Madballs: Gross Jokes, but my god was it boring. The story wasn't all that interesting, the humor was forced at times, rarely ever coming off as entertaining, and the animation is stiff and awful, making the thought that this would have a theatrical release all the more comical. I give credit to Tom Kenny and Joe Alaskey for giving it their best shot in the voice department, but everyone else sounds horrible.And it just really has no reason to exist. I get how you can make an animated story out of something like Battletoads (despite its crappiness), but THIS? It's a crappy little bowling game with elves with no real plot. And the plot we get is bland, predictable, and ugly to look at. It can fa-la-la-la-lick my bowling balls. Simply put, if you watch this movie...
Merry Christmahanakwanzika evurrbuddy.