Arthur Christmas

The results are not only funny and fresh, but represent a new way of tackling the whole yuletide paradigm: Santa as a high-tech hereditary monarchy.

The action is swift and witty, and the 3-D effects are imaginative and not simply tacked on as with so many animated movies these days.

This witty, handsomely appointed 3-D animated feature is the most delightful Santa biopic since Edmund Gwenn donned the fat suit.

It's as bright and twinkling as a Christmas tree, decked with warmth and humor.

Good for the kids, good for the parents, and good for Christmas.

Original and inspired, this joyful animated frolic is seriously entertaining, audiences of all ages sure to eat up its heartwarming Yule-tied message of family, resilience and togetherness that's as touching as it is wonderful.

The settings, especially on the North Pole, are deliciously intricate and the characters understatedly quirky.

The under-10 audience I saw it with were entranced, and, remarkably enough by itself, so were their parents. Huzzah, Aardman!

It's busy but buoyant, and it honors the tradition of giving with wit and style.

It's rare for me to laugh out loud, repeatedly, during a movie these days, but 'Arthur Christmas' gave me that welcome opportunity. It is so ingenious, endearing, and downright funny that it instantly joins the ranks of first-class holiday movies...

The surprise gift of the season: a sharp, savvy holiday comedy that doesn't get its laughs at the expense of those who start to glow in the early days of December. It's a most entertaining package indeed.

The premise recalls those sophisticated lies parents cook up when their kids start asking logical questions about Santa.

Unexpectedly fresh, despite the familiar-sounding premise.

Like most of Aardman's work ... [it's] more clever than outright funny, but it's also genuinely sweet, and the complicated relations among Santa's clan are surprisingly believable

An animated kiddie comedy that delivers all the wonder you'd expect in a movie about a guy delivering one package.

The animation itself is beautiful and delightfully detailed, and the 3D is of the rare breed that makes the supposed "gimmick" look to have real value, the bow on top of the already lovely present that is Arthur Christmas.

It's a lovely bit of work.

Take it as you will: a special Christmastime treat, or a gift-wrapped cross-promotional fruitcake (um, thanks?) from Aardman's Hollywood partners.

What makes Arthur sing is that it plays as much like a family comedy as a holiday film.

Arthur Christmas gets a little sappy toward the end -- it is a Christmas movie, after all -- but it otherwise strikes just the right combination of naughty and nice, reverent and irrelevant, holiday-sweet and Aardman dry.