Free Will

Elf works only because of Ferrell, because his Buddy is endearing without becoming cloying, screwball without turning screw-up. He's a child trapped inside adult-sized green tights and reminiscent most of all of Tom Hanks in Big--the good-natured naïf who doesn't understand grown-up things like cynicism and suspicion. Frankly, it could have come off as a little disturbing--especially when Ferrell sneaks into the department store women's bathroom while Deschanel's singing in the shower, or when he engages Caan in a "tickle fight"--but because Ferrell plays Buddy so wide-eyed and innocent, so absolutely lovable, the movie works.

"It's funny that you mention Big, because in talking with Favreau about the movie, that's kind of what we were shooting for," Ferrell says. "I'm not saying that it's as good a movie as Big, but that's what we were shooting for, that kind of tone. That movie is artfully done in the way that it is comedic and dramatic all at the same time. I was always worried that the bathroom scene with Zooey would come off as creepy guy in an elf suit going into the women's bathroom. But I've got to hand it to Favreau, because he was like, 'No, no, it works, because you just see that he just innocently heard this voice and doesn't really even realize where he is.' It's a good motto for life. Remember, creep factor can end up being sweet and innocent."

When Ferrell left Saturday Night Live at the end of SNL's 27th season, he received a hero's send-off--an unprecedented adios for a show that has watched some of its most beloved alumni leave without so much as a handshake or a "Screw you." Usually, a cast member just vanishes into a series of bad movies, or an entire ensemble is executed en masse; one minute he's Chevy Chase and you're not, and the next even he's no longer Chevy Chase. Over the years, producer Lorne Michaels has become particularly adept at firing even the most favorite of sons, among them Adam Sandler and Chris Farley, who were let go at the insistence of NBC higher-ups.

But Ferrell had become so beloved that his departure on May 18, 2002, became a giddy send-off. Alex Trebek appeared during Ferrell's last stint hosting Celebrity Jeopardy, and Neil Diamond joined him at the end of Weekend Update, where they performed a terribly uncomfortable duet--absurd parody and actual performer, side by side à la John Belushi and Joe Cocker 25 years earlier. This, despite the fact Ferrell had, four years earlier, appeared in a VH1 Storytellers sketch in which his Neil Diamond introduced the song "America" by explaining that "my love of this great and beautiful nation and my hatred of all people with dark skin led me to write this."

In Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller's Live From New York, an oral history of SNL, Ferrell says when you leave the show, you're not allowed to say you graduated; Michaels, he explains, hates the word. That's reasonable enough: To say you've graduated means you've moved on to something bigger and better after years of training for it; it diminishes SNL, making it sound like Michael's Learning Annex course in comedy. Besides, it is often a springboard for mediocrity: The show has turned out many millionaires, but few of substance--hell, maybe just one. Only Bill Murray has managed to fashion an admirable filmography that only gets more venerable over time; his haunted, touching performance in Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation is among the year's best.

Ferrell, who has the range of a sniper's rifle, has it in him to follow in Murray's footsteps without stumbling. If nothing else, that is his plan.

"I was just talking about that!" he says, using his big voice. "I was just saying how that's, like, the guy. I love the way he's gotten to kind of bounce back and forth and do all these things. The same with Luke and Owen Wilson. I don't think it's conceited, but I think that's the only way that I've approached comedy, more as an actor than as a comedian in a way, even when I was doing the silliest sketch at the Groundlings or on SNL. Molly Shannon and I used to talk about this all the time when we were at SNL. The only way we knew how to play it was real and straight and as if it was really happening. In Elf, it's not as hard when you have an elf suit. I would always say, 'Whew, thank God I've got this costume on. It's half the battle.' But I've got to kind of play against that, against the fact that I was completely unaware that what I was wearing was not normal."