The regift of 'Elf' seems ho, ho, hum

For more years than Santa has belly rolls, Broadway has been trying to come up with a musical that would do for holiday theater what "The Nutcracker" does for ballet. Make kids happy. Make grown-ups happy. Make producers rich and, therefore, happy.

Enter "Elf," the latest commodity entertainment to go where "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" and "White Christmas" have left their market void.

The new show has a smart cross section of credentials: director Casey Nicholaw and co-writer Bob Martin of the droll and charming "Drowsy Chaperone"; co-author Thomas Meehan of monster hits "Annie" and "Hairspray"; musical team Matthew Sklar and Chad Beguelin, who wrote Broadway's harmless high-energy movie knockoff "The Wedding Singer."

Instead of droll and charming, alas, "Elf" is mostly sticky and cloying, with bits of wit but derivative plot and generic music. We meet at the North Pole, where Santa (a squeaky-dry George Wendt) tells the story of the orphan Buddy, who crawled into Santa's bag and was raised as an elf.

Where "Elf," the 2003 movie, played on the surface blandness and subversive underpinnings of Will Ferrell, our Buddy (Sebastian Arcelus) is just a pleasant fellow who sings, dances and smiles a lot. After finding out the truth, he walks to Manhattan (via David Rockwell's half-magic, half-cheesy sets) to find his biological father (Mark Jacoby) and to nag amusingly annoyed New Yorkers to "spread some Christmas cheer by singing loud for all to hear."

At Macy's (the show is a stocking stuffer of product placement), he encourages the workers to sing (wait for it) "Sparklejollytwinklejingley" and catches the eye of a cynical lovely (the nicely spiky Amy Spanger). His dad is a Scrooge of a workaholic, but Buddy bonds with the dad's neglected wife and son (strong and believable Beth Leavel and young Matthew Gumley).

Buddy has to get New Yorkers to believe in Santa because PETA, of all cheap shots, made him give up his reindeer. So Santa can only fly on Christmas spirit, you know, like Tinkerbell. Everyone ends up in Central Park, trying to work up enough enthusiasm to fuel the sleigh. They are outside of Tavern on the Green, which obviously hadn't yet closed and had its bathroom fixtures auctioned off. What a metaphor. A timeless story that's already yesterday's news.