Ed Asner, with his TV-style curmudgeonly warmth is perfect for this crass commercial vision of Father Christmas. But the meaning is worse--it's the opposite of How the Grinch Stole Christmas, right? The makers of Elf have made a "holiday classic" that equates Christmas spirit with getting presents. And not just any old present, but exactly what you asked for, including manufacturer's name: it's the label that counts.

Peter Dinklage in Tom McCarthy's The Station Agent: Let Him Loose

The only person in Elf who takes comic command of the screen besides Ferrell is Peter Dinklage as a tough, corrupt ghostwriter who is a dwarf and who resents Buddy's taking him for an elf. Dinklage is also currently starring in first-time writer-director Tom McCarthy's muted independent movie The Station Agent and he's the best reason to see it. McCarthy's movie is about Fin (Dinklage), a dwarf who inherits a train station house in nowhere New Jersey, which suits him fine because all he wants is to be left alone. Though it doesn't say so explicitly, from what the movie shows Fin can't take the fact that nearly everyone responds to him as a dwarf: they snap a picture, or scream, or laugh and taunt him (asking where Snow White is, for instance), or are too noticeably tactful about it.

Dinklage is refreshing because as an actor he doesn't use the fact that he's a dwarf in any of the ingratiating ways we're used to (and he was similarly wary on Jay Leno), but that's a matter of disposition, or discipline, not of talent. In addition, however, he has a big, square, handsome head, with a naturally romantic brooding quality and an alarming theatrical flair for releasing pent-up emotion. We can appreciate The Station Agent for trying to get past the issue of Fin's stature, for letting the man be whoever he is, but Dinklage's best moment comes when he stands on his stool in a bar and drunkenly throws people's fascination with him as a dwarf in their faces.

Dinklage is a fine naturalistic actor but the power in his naturalism comes from our sense that he's holding back. Of course, this is thematic in the movie. Fin is always somewhere else where size isn't an issue, but this cramps Dinklage who's more unleashed in Elf than in 90% of the running time of The Station Agent. Only in the bar scene does he have a molten quality that makes sense of his dark Rochester-Heathcliff looks, but that McCarthy otherwise wastes.