It was the night before Christmas – and as if Santa didn’t have enough on his plate, he falls down a rabbit hole. Carys Bexington and illustrator Kate Hindley’s popular kids’ book sending Santa on an adventure to Alice’s Wonderland has now been turned into a family Christmas movie. Gerard Butler stars as the big guy, with Game of Thrones’ Emilia Clarke voicing the Queen of Hearts (channelling Blackadder’s right royal meanie Elizabeth I with a bit of Peppa’s Mummy Pig). It’s all very charming: as cosy as crumpets in front of an open fire. But the film-makers are really pushing it, by stretching out the book’s 30-odd pages into 80 minutes of screen time.

Sticking with the picture-book feel, it looks gorgeous. The animation is sweetly naive yet detailed and closely observed. Santa’s present-making operation is a delight: a conveyor belt of toys, pint-sized elves beavering away, stroppy reindeers playing darts in the shed. And it’s the reindeers who are the real stars here, with their sarky comments and eye-rolling. “That is not in my contract,” one mutters when Santa announces a last-minute drop-off at Wonderland to deliver a present to a princess.

The problem with the stopover is that the Queen of Hearts has banned tinsel and mince pies. No one is allowed to mention the C-word in Wonderland – or it’s off with their heads. The queen’s loathing of Christmas is the result of festive-related childhood trauma, as Santa soon discovers. And there are some lovely playful moments: his favourite elf eats a magic shroom and grows to monstrous proportions. But there is a lot of padding and the decision to stick with the book’s rhyming scheme becomes annoying (“Tell me Mad Hatter or I’ll give you a clout / Where are the guests, spit it out.”) The little bottom sitting next to me was wriggling well before the hour mark.

The Night Before Christmas in Wonderland is on Sky Cinema and Now from 13 December