Why James Caan Was Dismayed When He Met Will Ferrell While Making Elf: ‘It’s All a Sham’

Elf might be a Christmas classic now, but it had some bumps to its path to success.

The 2003 film starred Will Ferrell as Buddy the Elf, a human who’s raised in the North Pole. When he outgrows elf life, he travels to New York City to reconnect with his birth father, Walter Hobbs, played by James Caan. Mary Steenburgen played Walter’s wife Emily, with Daniel Tay as his younger brother Michael. The cast was rounded out by Zooey Deschanel as Jovie, the late Ed Asner as Santa Claus and the late Bob Newhart as Papa Elf. The movie was directed by Jon Favreau,

Back when the movie was released, Ferrell, now 58, opened up to PEOPLE about making the film. “There were catcalls of ‘Nice tights!’ ” he said of filming on the streets of Manhattan. “If they didn’t see a camera nearby, they’d avoid me. The best was when I’d hug people. They’d say, ‘You’re that guy from Saturday Night Live — have you gone insane?’ ”

But though Ferrell was already known for his on-camera hijinks, in real life he was much more subdued, which apparently dismayed his Elf dad Caan. 

 “He’d look at me and say, ‘I thought this would be fun, but you’re just a guy. You’re not funny,'” Ferrell said. “I just told him, ‘Jimmy, it’s all a sham.'” Caan died in 2022 at 82. 

Elf was a box office success, grossing over $200 million, but its future as a Christmas classic wasn’t set in stone at the time. PEOPLE’s critic was not a fan, and wrote at the time, “It would be Scrooge-like to say mean things about the innocuous Elf, so I’ll just point out that director Jon Favreau’s film rarely reaches its full comic potential, especially with its lackluster ending.” They noted that kids might love the movie, but “more discerning adults” would feel Ferrell went too far. But over the years, children and adults alike flocked to the film. 

Ferrell told Variety in 2024 that even though Caan told him he wasn’t funny on set, he changed his mind after seeing the movie. “He was like, ‘I’ve got to tell you: I thought everything you were doing while we were filming was way too over the top. Now that I see it in the movie, it’s brilliant,’” Ferrell said, calling it “the best compliment.”

He added that in the whole movie, Caan wasn’t acting: “He’s truly annoyed with me.”

In 2020, Caan said that when Elf was successful, he expected there to be a sequel. He thought, “Oh my God, I finally have a franchise movie. I can make some money, let my kids do what the hell they want to do.” But a sequel never happened. 

A year later, Ferrell explained why he turned down a second movie. “I would have had to promote the movie from an honest place, which would’ve been, like, ‘Oh no, it’s not good. I just couldn’t turn down that much money,'” he told The Hollywood Reporter about the sequel, which would have had a similar fish-out-of-water plot. “And I thought, ‘Can I actually say those words? I don’t think I can, so I guess I can’t do the movie.'”

Buddy the Elf has remained one of his most beloved character. In December 2024, he turned heads when he appeared at a hockey game as a drunk Buddy. But he told PEOPLE that some people “were not too happy” with his antics. “They thought, ‘Please be true to the character. That was not cool.’”

Looking back on Elf, Ferrell told PEOPLE in 2024, “It’s really quite special. I mean, it continues to grow by leaps and bounds, and it continues to kind of entrench itself as kind of a holiday classic for people. I’m so lucky to have a movie like that in my catalog.”

Fans often tell him they re-watch it during any month of the year. “I have people come to me saying, ‘We watch Elf on July 4th. We just love it.’ ”

“So that’s what’s so great about what I get to do,” he added. “You never really have an idea of what’s going to land with people, and I love the fact that this movie continues to resonate in a way that’s pretty incredible.”