Adventure, elves and home truths mingle in this big-hearted movie based on a Matt Haig children’s book
You’d need to have the humbuggiest of hearts not to be charmed, even just a little bit, by this family
Christmas movie – lavishly adapted, no expense spared, from a kids’ novel by Matt Haig. It begins in modern-day
London, with Maggie Smith as the Mary Poppins-ish great-aunt to a trio of siblings. Their mum has recently died, so no one is feeling festive when Aunt Ruth begins telling them a bedtime story on Christmas Eve.
Her fairytale is a Santa Claus origins myth, about a boy called Nikolas (played by delightfully urchin-faced newcomer Henry Lawfull). He lives in a forest in Finland with his poor woodcutter dad (Michiel Huisman). They are so poor that when the dotty king (played by Jim Broadbent with endearing spoiled-child petulance) offers a reward to anyone who can bring hope to the land, Nikolas’s dad goes off in search of Elfhelm, the fabled kingdom of elves.