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