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Elf

Elf is one of my all time favorite Christmas movies. It has classic Will Ferrell being Will Ferrell humor and plenty of hilarity and Christmas cheer to go around. The two scenes you picked are classic scenes from the movie for a reason.
The Santa scene is iconic because of Will Ferrell's brilliant acting and the overall ridiculousness of the situation. In this scene, the store manager announces that "santa"/ an actor playing Santa will be at the store tomorrow, but Buddy, having lived in the North Pole with the real Santa expects the santa to be the actual Santa and gets ridiculously happy to see his old boss, but the other adults, who know that this Santa will be an actor, are confused by his enthusiasm. This causes incongruity because hot would not expect a fully grown man to be so excited to "see Santa".
The burping scene is also hilarious and a true classic. There are two main incongruities present here. The first is how long the burp lasts, which is much longer than a normal burp and this creates a larger comedic effect than a burp joke by itself. The second present incongruity is Buddy, a grown man, chugging a liter of soda and burping this way. The expectation is that a tween or teen may do this kind of thing, so it coming from an adult is a subversion of expectations and this enhances the humor of the situation.

Comments

  1. Shane HerronOctober 19, 2018 at 10:17 AM

    I wonder how much of the success of the movie relies on Will Ferrel's comedic abilities to channel this sort of childish enthusiasm. Or his ability to do something else maybe. I wonder what his signature ability is?

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownOctober 19, 2018 at 10:18 AM

    The Santa scene is truly one of the iconic moments in Elf. I love how people reacted to Buddy's childish and immature nature.

    ReplyDelete

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