Elf on the big screen shows us why we need cinemas

Is there any point traipsing through the cold to a cinema to watch Elf, a film you’ve almost certainly already got on DVD or could probably easily find on a streaming platform somewhere? Well, yes, in fact. There is every point. Seeing Elf on the big screen will be a timely reminder just why cinemas matter. And just why we need to use them.

On Sunday night, a couple of weeks before Christmas, watching one of the most festive films you could imagine, there were just six of us. I wonder what your experience has been this year, but in 2022 I can barely remember sitting in a busy cinema – despite going at least once a week. Of all the art forms, you can’t help feeling that cinema is the one that’s suffered the most from the pandemic – and is suffering most still.

In a way, it is worrying that Elf is in the cinemas at all this year. Where is the glut of ho-ho-ho merriness that shouldn’t leave room for anything else? Where are the new festive tearjerkers that should have us flocking to the cinemas?

This December cinema doesn’t seem to be offering us a whole lot more than endless screenings of Matilda and even more endless screenings, from this week, of the latest three-hour slab of Avatar. And that is deeply worrying. You will sit in the cinema wondering where the audience is; but you might also find yourself wondering where the films are.

Which is the most terrible shame. Cinemas are trying to be affordable – though you might wonder whether they could ever possibly do enough these days. But if you can afford it, the cinema is still pretty much the most mind-blowing, enjoyable, enthralling (insert pretty much whichever positive adjective you like) form of entertainment open to us all. The crucial thing is that there is a world of difference between sitting watching Elf at home and watching it as a (let’s hope) communal experience on a huge screen. The point is that it actually comes to life. Watch it at home and it is just same old, same old, seen it before. Watch it at the cinema and a new freshness runs through it: it’s funnier, it’s livelier and it’s lovelier.

Elf, starring Will Ferrell, James Caan, Zooey Deschanel etc, is a very, very good Christmas film. It is possibly not an absolute classic, but watch it at the cinema and it will seem so – the heart-warming tale (which could work only at Christmas) of a human, mistakenly brought up as an elf, who returns to earth in search of his dad.

Watch it and you will feel like you can see where Enchanted and other such films came from. It is the tale of the naivety and innocence and sheer enthusiasm of the fairy-tale world crashing headfirst into the small-minded, joyless, jaundiced, tired, cynical outlook of our real world; it’s an uplifting tale of how fantasy can enrich our reality. It’s the sweetest watch – but it hits the spot so much better in the cinema (and would have done even more so if there had been more than four other people in there). Interesting, though, how films date. That Peter Dinklage “don’t call me elf” fight scene. Oh dear. You really wouldn’t get that now.