Elf (film) - Plot

Plot

A baby boy crawls into Santa Claus's (Ed Asner) sack of gifts while he is delivering toys to an orphanage one Christmas Eve. Santa Claus unwittingly takes the baby back to the North Pole, where Papa Elf (Bob Newhart) volunteers to raise him. The baby was christened William but through a humorous misunderstanding is renamed Buddy (Will Ferrell). He is raised unaware of his status as a human, until his enormous size and (relatively) poor toy-making abilities lead him to ultimately find out the truth. Papa Elf reveals that Buddy was born to Walter Hobbs (James Caan) and Susan Wells and given up for adoption, and that Walter never knew of his existence. He explains how Susan later died and that Walter now works at a children's book company in New York City. Buddy sets out for Manhattan to find his father.

Upon arriving in the Big Apple, Buddy comically displays his ignorance in several ways. He eventually tracks down his father in the Empire State Building. Incredulous, Walter Hobbs calls security on him. Their sarcastic advice was to "get back to Gimbel's", where he is mistaken for an employee and meets the lovely Jovie (Zooey Deschanel). Later, when the toy store Santa arrives, Buddy is shocked to discover that Gimbel's Santa is not the genuine article, and a fight ensues between them. He is arrested and sentenced to 24 hours in jail. Eventually, Walter reluctantly bails him out and takes him to a pediatrician for a DNA test. Once it is proven that he is in fact Walter's son, he takes him home to meet his stepmother, Emily (Mary Steenburgen) and half-brother, Michael (Daniel Tay).

Buddy befriends Michael after defeating some bullies in a snowball fight, and shortly after that he goes on a date with Jovie. Walter, meanwhile, has been trying to save his floundering business by hiring the temperamental bestselling writer Miles Finch (Peter Dinklage). When the very short Finch arrives, Buddy mistakes him for an elf. Miles attacks Buddy and storms out without signing a deal with Walter's company. Walter is so angry over this setback that he yells at Buddy to get out of his life. Depressed and afraid, Buddy writes a message to his father and runs away.

Michael reads Buddy's message and bursts in on Walter's board meeting to frantically inform him that Buddy is gone. He manages to convince Walter to put his family above his job for the first time. Buddy sees Santa's sleigh crash in Central Park. He finds Santa, who explains that he lost the sleigh's "Kringle 3000, 500 Reindeer-Power" jet engine and that the last bit of Christmas Spirit had faded as well. Walter and Michael then encounter Buddy in Central Park, where Walter apologizes to Buddy for his behavior and accepts him as his son. Buddy takes them to meet Santa, who reveals to Michael that believing in him can make his sleigh fly. Michael reads Santa's list in front of TV cameras gathered outside the park, so that people all across New York City believe in him. The Central Park Rangers begin to chase his sleigh while Buddy is still trying to reattach the engine.

Jovie manages to overcome her shyness and get the sleigh back in the air by the power of Christmas Spirit when she leads the crowd in singing "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town," with even Walter joining in. Later, he starts his own publishing company with the first best-selling book released being titled Elf, an account of Buddy's adventures. Buddy and Jovie marry and have a daughter they named Susan after Buddy's mother, and in the closing scene they are shown visiting Papa Elf at the North Pole.

In the end, Leon the Snowman closes the storybook, being the last one left, as the iris closes, then, he winks.