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1. Who plays Buddy?
Will Ferrell
Ferrell had just left Saturday Night Live, and this was his first lead in a film, played with no winking at all. Jim Carrey was attached to the script when it was first written a decade earlier, which is what makes him the tempting wrong answer.
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2. Who directed Elf?
Jon Favreau
Favreau was better known as an actor and the writer of Swingers, with one small directing credit behind him. He also turns up on screen as the doctor who runs Buddy's paternity test, and he provides the voice of Mr Narwhal.
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3. How does baby Buddy reach the North Pole?
He crawls into Santa's sack
The baby crawls into the sack at an orphanage on Christmas Eve, chasing a teddy bear, and is only found when Santa unpacks back at the North Pole. Santa knew who the father was all along, which is how Buddy is later given a name and an address.
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4. Who raises Buddy at the North Pole?
Papa Elf
Papa Elf takes the baby in and also narrates the film, from an armchair with a storybook, in a deadpan that sets the tone. Buddy only learns the truth as a grown man, after overhearing two elves gossiping about it.
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5. Who plays Papa Elf?
Bob Newhart
Newhart, the deadpan stand-up and sitcom veteran, was cast for exactly the calm that makes Ferrell look even bigger beside him. Ed Asner is in the film too, as Santa, and Don Rickles and Dick Van Dyke were simply his contemporaries.
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6. What is Buddy's biological father's name?
Walter Hobbs
Walter never knew Buddy existed: his mother, Susan Wells, gave the baby up and died without telling him. He is on the naughty list anyway, for how he does business. Miles Finch is the bestselling author Walter flies in, whom Buddy mistakes for an elf.
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7. Who plays Walter?
James Caan
Caan, Sonny Corleone in The Godfather, plays Walter dead straight, which is the joke. Walter's turnaround comes when he walks out on his boss in the middle of a meeting to go after Buddy, and the epilogue finds him a changed man.
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8. What is Walter's job?
Children's book publisher
Walter runs a children's imprint at Greenway Press, where the current crisis is a book shipped with its last two pages missing, which he would rather not reprint. The deadline for a replacement is what brings the hotshot author to town.
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9. Where does Buddy meet Jovie?
Gimbels department store
Gimbels was a real New York department store, Macy's rival across the street, but it had closed in the 1980s, which is why the film could borrow the name. Jovie is working the Santa display as an elf, and Zooey Deschanel does her own singing in the part.
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10. What does Buddy congratulate a diner for, going by its sign?
The world's best cup of coffee
The sign is the kind half the diners in Manhattan hang, and Buddy takes it as a world record, bursting in to congratulate everyone. He later brings Jovie there on their date, after ice skating at Rockefeller Center, as the finest place he knows.
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11. What does Buddy pour over his spaghetti?
Maple syrup
He pours maple syrup over the family's spaghetti and adds crumbled Pop-Tarts, marshmallows and chocolate sauce, to his half-brother's fascination. Later he knocks back whiskey in the mailroom believing it is syrup, and the mailroom has a dance party.
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12. Which of these belongs to Buddy's four main food groups?
Candy corn
Candy, candy canes, candy corns and syrup are how the elves eat, and Buddy keeps to the diet in New York, which is how spaghetti ends up under syrup. Ferrell has said eating that much sugar on set left him with headaches.
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13. What small animal attacks Buddy after he tries to hug it?
A raccoon
He meets the raccoon on his walk south from the North Pole and asks 'Does someone need a hug?' before it goes for his face. The narwhal and the snowman on the same journey are stop-motion, a nod to the Rankin/Bass television specials.
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14. What must people do to help restore Christmas spirit near the end?
Sing together
The sleigh runs on Christmas spirit, measured by a Clausometer, and the Kringle 3000 engine fitted to make up the shortfall falls off over Central Park. Jovie starts the crowd on Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town on live television, and even Walter joins in.
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15. What toy is Buddy building far too slowly at the workshop?
Etch A Sketches
Buddy is on the Etch A Sketch line, finishes a small fraction of his quota and is moved to toy testing, where he spends the day being startled by a jack-in-the-box. The elves' tiny workshop was shot with forced perspective rather than digital effects.
