Elf(stylized aself) is a 2003 comedy film directed by Jon Favreau , written by David Berenbaum and starring Will Ferrell , James Caan , and Zooey Deschanel . It was released in the United States on November 7, 2003 and grossed over $220,400,000 worldwide.

A baby crawls into Santa Claus ' ( Ed Asner ) sack while he is delivering toys to an orphanage one Christmas Eve . He unwittingly takes the baby back to the North Pole , where Papa Elf ( Bob Newhart ) volunteers to raise him. He is named William, but they rename him Buddy ( Will Ferrell ) because he was wearing 'Little Buddy Diapers'. He is raised unaware that he is actually a human, until his enormous size and poor toy-making abilities force Papa Elf to tell him the truth. The old elf reveals that Buddy was born to Walter Hobbs ( James Caan ) and Susan Wells and given up for adoption , and that Walter never knew that he was born. He explains how Susan later died, and that Walter now works at a children's book company in New York City . Santa tells Buddy that Walter is on "the naughty list"; nevertheless, he sets out for New York to find his father.

Upon arriving in New York City, Buddy displays his ignorance in several ways, as he crosses the street at the stop signal, chews discarded gum on the subway station's handrails, and takes a coffee shop's claim to have the "world's best cup of coffee" literally. He eventually finds his father in the Empire State Building , but an incredulous Walter Hobbs calls security and expels him. Their sarcastic advice was to "get back to Gimbel's ", where he is mistaken for an employee and meets the lovely but somewhat unenthusiastic Jovie ( Zooey Deschanel ). After staying up all night, meticulously decorating the store (he says that elves only need about 40 minutes of sleep). In the morning, Buddy hears Jovie singing in the shower, and goes to the women's locker room to sing with her. However, Jovie gets the wrong idea and Buddy does not realize he is doing wrong. Later, when the toy store Santa comes, he is shocked to discover that Gimbel's Santa is not the genuine article, and a fight ensues between them. He is arrested and sentenced 24 hours in jail. 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 ). Walter is clearly put off by his immature, inconsiderate behavior (such as not seeming to understand that Walter isn't interested in playing with him), such as putting syrup on spaghetti, but Emily insists that they take care of him until he "recovers".

Buddy befriends Michael after the former defeats a gang of bullies single-handedly in a snowball fight , and Michael encourages him to ask Jovie out. The next day, Walter reluctantly takes him to work with him, and uses his naïveté to send him down to the mailroom . He gets drunk on a coworker's whiskey, thinking it's syrup, and ends up throwing a party in there. That night, he has a date with Jovie. Walter, meanwhile, has been trying to save his floundering business by hiring the temperamental best-selling writer Miles Finch. When the vertically-challenged Finch arrives, Buddy innocently thinks he is an elf. After being called "elf" many times, Miles attacks Buddy after being pushed to his limit and storms out of the conference room 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" as well as he states that he doesn't care that he's an elf, that he's crazy, and that he's his son. Buddy, now afraid of Walter's shadow, writes his message to his father, and then he runs away with hurt feelings.

Meanwhile, Michael sees Buddy's written message, and he bursts in on Walter's board meeting to tell him frantically that Buddy is gone. He manages to convince him to put his family above his job for the first time, and his boss fires Walter from his job because of leaving the business meeting on him with Michael. Buddy looks up and sees Santa's sleigh crash in Central Park . He finds Santa, who explains that he lost the sleigh's engine and that the last bit of Christmas spirit on the Clausometer (which had powered the sleigh previously) had gone. He convinces Buddy to help him fix the sleigh. Walter and Michael find Buddy in Central Park as he locates the sleigh's engine. He takes them to meet Santa, who reveals to Michael that belief in him (manifested in knowing that he is bringing people what they want for Christmas) can make his sleigh fly. Michael therefore steals his list and reads it in front of the TV cameras now gathered outside the park, so that people all across New York City believe conclusively in him. The Central Park Rangers begin to chase his sleigh while Buddy is still trying to reattach the engine, and it is one point lost.

However, Jovie, remembering what Buddy had told her about how singing is the best way to spread the joy of Christmas, manages to overcome her shyness and get the sleigh 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 eventually joining in. Later, he starts his own publishing company with the first book released being titledElf, an account of Buddy's adventures. Buddy and Jovie also marry and have a daughter named Susie and are shown to visit Papa Elf and the North Pole periodically.