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91The action is swift and witty, and the 3-D effects are imaginative and not simply tacked on as with so many animated movies these days.
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90Leave it to the folks who brought us "Wallace & Gromit," "Chicken Run" and "Flushed Away" to bring a delightful blast of fresh air to the conventional Christmas genre. Aardman's Arthur Christmas is that and more - an endlessly amusing 3D, CG-animated Yuletide romp with lively innovation at every turn and a dream voice cast headed by James McAvoy, Hugh Laurie and Bill Nighy.
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85Arthur Christmas is a Grinch-style story of rekindled Christmas spirit told from inside Santa's compound at the North Pole.
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83The resulting adventure, like most of Aardman's work (Chicken Run, Flushed Away), is more clever than outright funny, but it's also genuinely sweet, and the complicated relations among Santa's clan are surprisingly believable.
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83Arthur Christmas gets a little sappy toward the end - it is a Christmas movie, after all - but it otherwise strikes just the right combination of naughty and nice, reverent and irrelevant, holiday-sweet and Aardman dry.
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80It would be a Christmas miracle save for one lump of coal: an ear-shattering Justin Bieber song over the end credits. Gotta sell something to the kids at Yuletide.
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80The real draw of Arthur Christmas is simpler: It's really funny.
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80A great, big joy. Even if you're a bit bah humbug, just delight in the supremely clever Aardman comedy.
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Nov 10, 201180Arthur Christmas embraces this unconditional faith and rewards it with creative explanations and a brisk computer-animated adventure clever enough to become essential yuletide viewing.
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78Sarah Smith pulls the various threads of this wholly original – well, as original as can be reasonably expected given the thousands of cinematic iterations Christmastime has provoked over the years – together into a very coherent, visually stunning, oftentimes laugh-out-loud hilarious holiday film.
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75For the kids, the action is always lively and, for the rest of us, the dialogue has a witty and even caustic edge.
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75When it comes to Christmas movies, although most are quickly forgotten, a select few go on to become touchstones, beloved and re-watched by families year after year after year. Arthur Christmas may have what it takes to join the latter category.
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75Arthur is sort of a dull hero, but the grandfather is classic, hilarious Aardman -- a thoroughly British eccentric prone to weird nostalgic/fatalistic utterances.
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75This is a world where training wheels are called "stabilizers" and where children leave something called "mince pies" for Santa. (Um. Ew?) As a result, the occasional line will fly over your little ones' heads. But you can also expect for them to be charmed by it all.
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Nov 23, 201175The film does have a distinctly British cheek; even with a Sony Pictures co-credit over the titles, it's just un-Hollywood enough to feel like a breath of fresh North Pole air.
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75A worthy addition to the Christmas movie canon. It's funny and good-looking, with an impeccable voice cast of U.K. actors. It's also unexpectedly fresh, despite the familiar-sounding premise.
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75There's nothing dark about Arthur: It's as bright and twinkling as a Christmas tree, decked with warmth and humor.
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75Crisply shot and voiced by a legion of Brits, the animated Arthur seems aimed at the Scrooge and caroler in all of us.
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75The film's indefatigable holiday spirit is infectious.
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75A tender and upbeat spirit informs the writing and the execution.
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Nov 22, 201175Arthur Christmas stays sweet without becoming overly sentimental and is filled with sly details and smart action sequences.
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75In a genre - the animated holiday film - already overflowing with the sentimental, the silly Arthur Christmas is a most welcome treat to find stuffed into the cinema's stockings this holiday season.
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75A yuletide fable that boasts Aardman Animation's peerless mix of whip-smart comedy and cheery heart.
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70Arthur was made, in co-production with Sony, by Aardman Animations, the U.K. company best known for Nick Park's Wallace & Gromit shorts, and the character animation has some of the same homely charm.
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63Watching Arthur Christmas is like doing your holiday shopping on Dec. 23: fun and frantic, exciting and maddening.
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60All of the actors' vocal performances are spot-on, including McAvoy's gentle Arthur, Nighy's salty GrandSanta and Ashley Jensen's cute stowaway elf Bryony, a chipper little pixie that would make Rudolph's pal Hermey proud.
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60The plot may be a little too cluttered for the toddler crowd to follow, but the next age group up should be amused, and the script by Peter Baynham and Sarah Smith has plenty of sly jokes for grown-ups.
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60Arthur Christmas is not ultimately a cynical movie – it comes together sweetly and rather movingly at the end – but it springs forth from a place of cynicism.
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60Aimed at kids, Arthur Christmas could be a little trying if you're over 10, but if you want an easygoing flick to get you into the mood for the holidays you could do a lot worse.
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50The movie fails utterly at coming up with a story that merits all the eye candy.
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50The plot, though, is recycled from the Vince Vaughn comedy "Fred Claus" (Santa's duties are assumed by a goofy relative, in this case son Arthur) and the old Rankin-Bass special "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" (Arthur goes on a rogue expedition with a couple other misfits).
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12Ho-ho-huh? Arthur Christmas is an animated kiddie comedy that delivers all the wonder you'd expect in a movie about a guy delivering one package. Maybe they should have called it "UPS Man: The Movie."