Elf at 20

With a voiceover of Buddy’s expertly etch-a-sketched note to his family and a subsequent shot of him peering over the Queensboro Bridge, the classic Christmas comedy Elf reaches its emotional low point. But even this moment doesn’t pass up the opportunity for an inward chuckle—at least for those of us old enough to remember VCRs.

Elf, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year, is chock full of lighthearted, quotable lines, so this moment of melancholy—accentuated through the bridge shot, a nod to It’s A Wonderful Life—sticks out. Thematically, however, Buddy’s etch-a-sketch note holds a key aspect of the movie’s enduring appeal: Beneath the abundance of good humor, Elf is a story about belonging. The movie’s ability to explore this theme, with plenty of laughs along the way, is part of why it has met or even surpassed such Christmas comedy staples as Home Alone and Christmas Vacation in the two decades since its release.

We learn early on in the film that Buddy’s father didn’t know he was born, and that his mother gave him up for adoption as an infant before she died. The movie mostly doesn’t dwell on this background, primarily using it as a plot device to get Buddy to the North Pole with Santa and the elves, far away from the human father he has never met. But it sets the stage for the (often silly) social dynamics of the rest of the story. From the moment he begins crawling toward Santa’s sack of toys in the orphanage, Buddy finds himself in places where his presence is amusing precisely because he doesn’t belong.