Not only was it a Christmas movie and directed by Jon Favreau, who produced the atrocious mob comedy Made last year, but it starred Will Ferrell, a man who was painfully unfunny in Old School. And not only that, Ferrell spends the whole movie dressed as an elf. I thought the film would be clunky, stupid and obvious, with one joke being hammered endlessly into the ground.

However, against all odds, Elf has turned out to be not only a classic Christmas movie but, along with Love Actually (see page 8), one of the best comedies this year.

Ferrell plays the dementedly cheerful Buddy, a human being who, through a mishap, was brought up as an elf at Santa’s North Pole toy factory. Finding out that he is not originally from the North Pole but from New York, Buddy sets off to find his father (James Cann), a hard-nosed publishing executive who doesn’t even know Buddy exists.

The plot is pretty standard — as soon as it was revealed that Buddy’s father was on Santa’s naughty list, I roughly knew how the film would pan out. The film’s other subplots are also fairly pedestrian: Buddy’s father needing one of his books to be a hit, Buddy’s new little brother seeking more attention, and Buddy falling in love.

Comedy is one of the film genres least regarded by critics because comedy is difficult to maintain for an entire film — a joke is bound to fall flat at some stage. But Elf has the right tone, the right pace and, despite its by-the-book plot, the film is wildly imaginative. Ferrell is laugh-out-loud funny in this movie but the best thing about his performance is he is believable as a man who has been brought up as an elf. Caan is perfectly cast as the polar opposite of Buddy. He plays Buddy’s father sour-faced, deadpan, depressed and serious. Zooey Deschanel, Buddy's love interest Jovie, is radiant in a Reese Witherspoon way and certainly a name to watch.

Elf is a movie that can be enjoyed by the whole family. Unlike most comedies, it doesn’t patronise its audience and proves that funny is funny no matter how old you are. I found my inner elf. Will you?

After a very successful television career, Curtis wrote Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill and Bridget Jones’s Diary, which made him one of the most popular and sought-after writers in the business. Curtis’s latest script and directorial debut is Love Actually (15, seen at Dundee UGC).

Love Actually is overflowing with romance and comedy, making this a must see for those who enjoy the genre. The film is a patchwork quilt of stories, with at least a dozen characters woven into the film’s fabric in a style akin to a Robert Altman film or Magnolia.

And the plot of each and every one of these characters is about love: love between a father and son, a brother and sister, children, newly weds, friends, people falling in love, falling out of love, getting over love, lust, unrequited love, unconditional love. It’s an overwhelming and intoxicating brew.

In terms of cast this is the Ocean’s Eleven of the romantic comedy. Hugh Grant, Emma Thompson, Keira Knightley, Liam Neeson, Alan Rickman, Laura Linney, Colin Firth as well as a host of TV stars (Rowan Atkinson, Martin Freeman, Andrew Lincoln, Martine McCutcheon). But no one character dominates the film. This isn’t a character study, this is a study of love.

Curtis has detractors who complain that his films follow the same formula and they are sickly sweet. These criticisms are true to a point. The characters in Love Actually are reminiscent of characters from other films Curtis is written. And, of course, in this film we don’t get one happy ending but half a dozen happy endings (or more, I lost count).

Looking back, some of the plot developments in the film are fantastical, to say the least: an ugly guy is picked up by three American babes in a bar, a child runs through Heathrow security unchecked, a man holds up messages to confess his love. At points Curtis seems to take implausibility a step too far.

But these sections did not grate on me while I watched the film. In fact, Love Actually is probably the most fun I’ve had watching a film in the cinema all year. I would challenge anyone to watch this film and not laugh.

At well over two hours it is probably about 20 minutes too long. The obvious way to solve this problem would be to remove a couple of the segments. Some of the plot strands take up so little screen time that they barely register and there doesn’t seem to be much point in them being there.

This may have made for a better film, but there was not one part of the film that I did not enjoy. Richard Cutis has replaced Woody Allen as a man who can consistently produce touching romance with sharp comedy. This superior romantic comedy is one to love. Actually.

He sends out the message that washing and shaving regularly and being kind to the bathroom scales are for lesser menfolk. And thus he sets himself apart from the rest of the current Hollywood male star stable, who have a different message: “Get more manicures, use more moisturisers, and pose in the manner of a mannequin at every opportunity.”

When Crowe’s in this mode on the big screen, he has the sort of presence that suggests he’s been carved out of a giant sequoia tree and I reckon he’s fit to be placed up there with such heavyweights as Spencer Tracy and Robert Mitchum.

The good news is that in Master And Commander: The Far Side Of The World (12, previewed at Dundee Odeon), Crowe is looking extra-burly and super-scurvy and, as per the formula, the movie turns out to be magnificent.

Directed by Aussie Peter Weir (Witness, The Truman Show), the plot merges two books from the many written by the late Patrick O’Brien, concerning fictional Napoleonic War British Navy captain Jack Aubrey. The general feel of the novel cycle is C. S. Forrester’s Hornblower meets Jane Austen.

The result is a rip-roaring 135-million-dollar adventure movie, but with the sort of complex characters, intricate relationships and duelling chit-chat that afford the story more layers than the world’s largest onion. Pirates Of The Caribbean this very definitely isn’t.

The year is 1805, some months before Trafalgar. As the yarn ups anchor, Aubrey (Crowe) and his frigate, HMS Surprise, are off the coast of Brazil. He has orders to pursue, engage, sink, or seize as a prize, the bigger, better-gunned French privateer Acheron, which has eluded British blockades in Europe and is bound from the Atlantic to the Pacific, on a plunderous course aimed at helping finance Bonaparte’s impending invasion of England.

The main events which ensue in this lengthy film are few and simply laid out – a major ship-on-ship battle in a fog which leaves the Surprise crippled; a lay-up for a refit; a chase southward; a further skirmish with Acheron; the rounding of Cape Horn during a violent storm; the resumed pursuit northwards, up the coast of South America; a visit to the Galapagos Island; and a final sail-rending, boat-splintering battle with the French vessel.

But the big incidents of Master And Commander are the least of it, even though they are as thrillingly portrayed as any action sequences I’ve seen recently.

The seeds of the film’s success lie in its quieter thoughtful moments and in its minutiae – the dense and authentic detail of everyday life aboard an early 19th century warship, the relationships between officers and crew, and officer and officer, and a probing examination of the mighty burdensome life-and-death powers which went with the captaincy of such a ship – a ‘little wooden world’, as Aubrey describes it.

Just as ship’s surgeon-cum-naturalist Stephen Maturin (Paul Bettany) studies his bugs under a magnifying glass, the film gives the viewer a microscopic view of life on board the Surprise and every scene is a pleasure – as the officers sit around consuming port and weevilled biscuits, Aubrey recalls dinner with Nelson and the great man’s memorable words to him… “Pass the salt please, Aubrey”; as a protective plate, Maturin fits a coin into the skull of a wounded sailor as other crewmen crowd around and rubberneck the patient’s temporarily exposed brain; the so-young midshipmen shuffling along the deck in a tight group, like timid chicks; Maturin operating on himself after a friendly fire incident; a midshipman having his arm amputated.

These are just a few vignettes from a movie packed with them. And at the other end of the scale, the big, set-piece sequences are mind-blowing. For instance, the devastating effect, below decks, on a wooden ship raked from stern to bow with cannon shot.

Truly stand-out though, is the struggle around Cape Horn, in which CGI has been used, but with not a seam showing. In a storm so violent that the ship is tossed around like a twig at a tidal wave convention, a high camera swoops in, out and around the upper yard arms as the ratings struggle to take in sail. So real does this look, but realistically impossible to film, that I was left completely dumbfounded as to how Weir and his crew achieved the footage, even with computers. Maybe they used a camera strapped to the heid of a trained albatross, after all.

The pivotal relationship is between Aubrey and Maturin. The best of friends, they duet together of an evening on cello and viola, but there are potential flashpoints. Aubrey, although cultured, kind and a master mariner of the finest judgment, is also very much for king, country and duty, and he has a superstitious streak (at times there be talk of a Jonah). Conversely, Maturin is a man of science, a fledgling Darwin and somewhat above the squabbles of men. Maturin wants to see the Galapagos, Aubrey wants to pursue the French.

Overall though, this is Crowe’s film, and he towers taller than the Surprise’s main mast. There’s a touch of Ahab about Aubrey, with Acheron in the role of Moby Dick. The viewer is barely given a proper glimpse of this elusive ‘phantom ship’, as the English sailors refer to her, or its occupants, until the finale, and this heightens the sense of a driven, haunted Aubrey giving relentless chase to an uncatchable will o the wisp.

As someone who, 25 years ago, spent two weeks before the mast aboard a sail training schooner and saw storms and all, me hearties, and who has been left with the most vivid memories of that unique experience, I can only salute Peter Weir and congratulate him on how true-to-life he has made this film.

I never had to endure cannon fire, chew on a weevil, or suffer the lash, and have not been left with a wooden leg or a vacant eye socket as a memento.

But this ship creaks and groans like the one I remember, and the thrill and fear of pushing through high seas at speed at night, while hanging onto a rope and sliding around on a deck at 45 degrees to the horizontal is here on the big screen to be seen and felt.

Believe me, you can actually taste the salt — or was that just the popcorn?

n Master And Commander does have one extremely disconcerting moment, though. In the movie’s first close-up, we see the moonlit face of the Surprise’s coxswain. It’s Glaswegian actor Billy Boyd — Pippin Took, from the Lord Of The Rings movies.

Clapping eyes on him, I couldn’t suppress the thought, “What’s a hobbit doing steering a sailing ship across the Atlantic in 1805?

As the middle episode in Tolkien’s three-part tale, it has no natural beginning or end in cinematic terms.

Preparing the theatrical cut of the film meant sacrificing many elements dear to the fans, and moving some of the key elements of the book into the third film, The Return of the King (due for cinema release on December 17).

What Jackson achieved with the theatrical cut was a great film, but with this extended edition he has managed to put back some of the heart of the story.

The extra 42 minutes of footage, complete with new score and digital efects, adds depth to the characters, and appeases the fans who missed many of the iconic scenes left on the cutting room floor to bring the film to a manageable length for cinema release.

Possibly the most welcome addition is the episode with the Steward of Gondor, Denethor and his sons Boromir and Faramir. The tensions displayed here give a better understanding of Faramir’s actions, and sets us up for even greater conflict in the third film.

Fans (geeks like myself) will be thrilled at the inclusion of more scenes with the ents and hobbits, and, of course, you can never have too much Gollum.

DVD Extras: The dvd comes with two discs of completely new material, including cast and crew commentaries on the movie; 15 exclusive video documentaries covering every aspect of the film-making process, from scripting to scoring and special effects; galleries with hundreds of images; and interactive maps of Tolkien’s Middle Earth and New Zealand, which is as much a star of these films as the actors.

Of course, the greatest moment for this anorak is scanning the endless credits, knowing that after the film makers have been acknowledged, the 10,000 charter members of the fan club get a name check. Just wish my name came earlier in the alphabet.

JIM CARREY playing God may strike fear into the heart of churchgoers everywhere, but the quick-talking, face-twisting comic avoids sin and delivers a funny and omnipotent performance in this box-office smash.

Carrey plays Bruce Nolan, a man who is not satisfied with his life and who flies into a rage with God after a particularly bad day. However God (Morgan Freeman) hears Bruce and gives him the chance to do a better job.

Bruce, of course, takes full advantage of his new powers but, after a week, God pays him a visit to tell him that unless he has improved life on Earth the world will be discarded.

Bestowing Jim Carrey with godlike powers is a ripe recipe for comedy, and in Bruce Almighty he steers away from the more serious fare of Man on the Moon and The Majestic and delivers the laughs that his mainstream fans prefer.

Extras: Not too much to write home about, a standard commentary from director Tom Shadyac is dull and lifeless and the making-of featurette does little to improve the situation. Only a series of outtakes lightens the mood.

On first viewing the footage looks quite unreal. Green fields churned into muddy swamps, pretty Belgian villages reduced to rubble and a generation of European youth dead and dying in rat-infested trenches.

It’s unsettling to see the casualties of war in real flesh tones.

Fremantle Home Entertainment have released the six-part World War 1 In Colour on DVD and video. The series is the result of five months of painstaking work colouring black and white footage from Russian, French, Italian, German and UK sources, including the Imperial War Museum in London.

The result is a stunning record of one of the bleakest eras in our history.

The extras include interviews with the series makers and a 50-minute special giving a further insight into the battes of the conflict. The DVD retails at £24.99, with the video £19.99.