'Noelle' is a Christmas movie made for Disney Plus last year, and stars Anna Kendrick as the daughter of a recently deceased Santa, and sister to the Santa designate. Though she spends some time in the film committed for mental evaluation Kendrick's 'Noelle' is not crazy, she really did grow up in the North Pole, and as a result of this has a hard time appropriately interacting with other humans when she travels to Arizona to retrieve her way word brother (a perfectly cast Bill Hader), who fled in nerviness regarding his up coming duties. Christmas of course is saved in the end, and the plots 'twist' is fairly evident early on.
I didn't really care though, this was a fun and low key holiday fish out of water story. It's really a cross between a traditional, fantastical family Christmas adventure film, and one of those Hallmark Christmas romances (this one particularly chaste), between Noelle and the private detective she enlists to help her in her search (Kingsely Ben-Air), he is of course single and has a cute young boy. Michael Gross is in this as an elder elf (I didn't know it was him until the end credits), and in contrast to the superior 'Christmas Chronicles' movies the elfs here are of a more familiar rendering, humans with pointy ears, but not short.
Other cast members who I should point out (aside from the cute CG baby deer 'Snowcone'), are Billy Eichner as a Santa cousin and the North Poles resident IT guy, Julie Hagerty as the widow Claus (who it feels like was in seemingly nothing for decades, but has kept popping up in stuff for the last few years), and Shirley MacLaine as Noelle's childhood elf nanny who accompanies her to Arizona. MacLaine is in her mid 80's and seems in great shape, both physical and mental.
The is another nicely relaxed Christmas film that you can hardly accuse of really stretching its self on anything, and thus makes for a pleasant but perhaps forgettable watch. Though some more conservative viewers might find it too PC. **1/2
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