One Christmas Eve, a small baby at an orphanage crawls into Santa’s bag of toys and is accidentally carried back to Santa’s workshop at the North Pole. There he’s raised to be an elf, but as he grows to be three times bigger than everyone else it becomes clear that Buddy (Ferrell) will never truly fit into the elf world.

One holiday season, Buddy finally decides to find his real family, and sets off for New York City to track down his roots but soon he finds himself as much an outsider there as back at the North Pole. In fact, everyone in New York seems to have forgotten the true meaning of Christmas, and so Buddy takes it upon himself to win over his family, realise his destiny, and save Christmas.