Elf: Comedy.
Starring: Will Ferrell, James Caan and Mary Steenburgen.
Directed by Jon Favreau. (PG. 100 minutes)

“Elf” is funny and intelligently made. A film for kids and adults that’s both sweet and sardonic. It takes the clash between the world as we know it and the world as it exists in Christmas stories and exploits that contrast to expert comic effect. Then it does something even more difficult — it comes in for a landing without banking too hard either in the direction of cynicism or sentiment. “Elf” stays perfectly in balance, a pleasure throughout.

Will 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. The first minutes make good use of the sight gag of Buddy, who is huge and has no idea he doesn’t belong, coping with tiny elf beds, chairs and toilets. “Elf” is a comedy of incongruity, but Buddy’s physical incongruity in elfland is nothing compared with the psychological incongruity of Buddy in New York City. That’s where screenwriter David Berenbaum and director Jon Favreau hit the comic mother lode.

See, Buddy finds out that he is not originally from the North Pole. He’s from New York, and so he travels there, looking for a father who doesn’t know he exists. The casting of the father couldn’t be more ideal — James Caan, who’s not at all known as a comic actor and therefore not as cuddly as, say, fellow tough-guy Robert De Niro. He plays a grasping, hard-nosed publishing executive and he seems like exactly that, not an exaggerated version, but the real thing.

When Buddy finds out that “Santa” is coming to Gimbels, he assumes it will be the real Santa (Edward Asner), not a helper. So the audience spends minutes looking forward to Buddy’s explosion when he finds out that the Gimbels Santa is an impostor.

As Buddy, Ferrell plays a happy idiot with heroic intensity and variety. Buddy is as uncontainable as a 6-year-old. It’s a terrific comic performance, completely invested, physically energetic and utterly relentless.

Overall “Elf” is the perfect Christmas entertainer for both adults and the kids.