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Christmas movies are already upon us, and major streamer Apple TV hopes they have a new holiday classic in “Spirited,” a big-hearted-but-clumsy riff on Charles Dickens ’ A Christmas Carol with two of the most likable movie stars alive. “Spirited” is like a big goofy puppy in how much it wants you to like it, and that eagerness to entertain can be its greatest strength and biggest weakness at the same time. It’s overstuffed, cluttered, way too long, and ignores some basic tech elements like coherent editing and production design. But there are times when all of that can slip away under the sheer goodwill of the entire thing. It’s almost like a community theater production of an original musical—so very rough around the edges but also pretty easy to root for in the end.

Sean Anders (“Daddy’s Home”) co-wrote and directed this admittedly clever variation on a tale that’s been told by everyone from the Muppets to Bill Murray , but this is a different kind of Scrooge tale. What if the ghosts that haunted Ebenezer Scrooge on that fateful night did the same thing every year to a different troubled soul? “Spirited” imagines an entire spiritual industry built around redeeming one relentless jerk—and, yes, it does get into the idea that so much energy expended on one person in an era of social media hit jobs that manipulate thousands is like a drop in a bucket. Still, facilitator Jacob Marley ( Patrick Page ) believes there’s value in their process, and he leads a massive team that researches each year’s chosen miser.

The team thinks they have a perfect choice in a Vancouver hotel manager who yells at janitors, but the Ghost of Christmas Present ( Will Ferrell ) runs into a speaker at the hotel named Clint Briggs ( Ryan Reynolds ), realizing he is the white whale. Briggs is a social media manipulator, introduced singing a song—oh yeah, this is a full-throated musical—about weaponizing the war on Christmas for profit. He is the kind of businessman who doesn’t see moral lines as long as his client wins, even if the client is his niece Wren ( Marlow Barkley ), who he convinces to do opposition research and social media shaming on her rival for a position at school. Clint’s assistant Kimberly ( Octavia Spencer ) looks like she has been worn down by the moral failures of her boss, but Clint doesn’t see himself as a force for bad. He’s just one of those guys who believes that hitting first is the best strategy. (And it’s a minor flaw of the film that the writers seem unwilling to make Clint too “unredeemable” and risk alienating viewers against one of their lovable leads.)

Ferrell’s ghost becomes obsessed with redeeming Clint, even as the other spirits ( Sunita Mani plays Past and Tracy Morgan voices Yet to Come) get sidelined. Surprisingly, “Spirited” becomes as much The Ghost of Christmas Present’s tale as it is Clint’s, as Ferrell’s character wants to leave it all behind and become human again, especially after finding an unexpected reason to rejoin the mortal coil.

All of this is told through the hyperactive energy of what feels at times like a draft for a stage musical both in function and form. Musical numbers explode with choruses of backup singers/dancers playing to one side of a set as if they’re on a stage. The sense that you’re watching a filmed stage musical extends to the production design, which often looks like cheap sets or green screen backgrounds instead of actual physical spaces. And the writing has that Broadway tendency to hit a few of the same beats over and over again, especially in the final acts of the film, which push this overlong musical to over two hours.

Despite all of those flaws, “Spirited” is a hard movie to slam. There’s a “let’s put on a show” energy in the performances of Reynolds, Ferrell, and Spencer that’s easy to like. No one is phoning this thing in (even if Ferrell might have been served by another singing lesson or two) and that kind of energy can be infectious. Holiday movies don’t have to be perfect. We kind of like them when they’re a little rough around the edges, something that can boost the mood of an entire family over winter break as they’ve turned off their critical weapons and just want something that goes down easy. In that “spirit," this one works.

On Apple TV Plus today.

Brian Tallerico

Brian Tallerico is the Managing Editor of RogerEbert.com, and also covers television, film, Blu-ray, and video games. He is also a writer for Vulture, The Playlist, The New York Times, and GQ, and the President of the Chicago Film Critics Association.

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Spirited (2022)

Rated PG-13 for language, some suggestive material and thematic elements.

127 minutes

Ryan Reynolds as Clint Briggs

Will Ferrell as Ghost of Christmas Present

Octavia Spencer as Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come

Sunita Mani as Ghost of Christmas Past

Aimee Carrero as Nora

• Sean Anders
• John Morris

Cinematographer

• Kramer Morgenthau
• Brad E. Wilhite
• Dominic Lewis

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‘Spirited’ Review: A Whole Lot of Humbug

Ryan Reynolds and Will Ferrell star in this musical spin on “A Christmas Carol” from Apple TV+.

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By Maya Phillips

Weeks before rabid hordes of consumers descend upon department stores like the avian menace in a Hitchcock film, before neighborhood dogs daintily lift their legs to the stripped-down sidewalk pines left for dead in the cheerless days of January, I’ve had an early Christmas revelation: Scrooge was onto something. All his grinching doesn’t seem so far-fetched; ol’ Ebenezer probably lost out on a Black Friday sale or watched too many bad Christmas movies, because after viewing the Sean Anders film “Spirited,” I’m feeling plenty humbuggy myself.

It’s not just that this Apple TV+ film (now in theaters, streaming on Nov. 18) is the billionth adaptation of “A Christmas Carol”; Dickens was such an O.G. that we’ve been understandably obsessed with retelling his story ever since. The issue is that the apish film is reminiscent of all the worst qualities of the newest holiday-ready tech fresh from the foothills of Cupertino, Calif.: It looks expensive and attempts to do everything at once, but it’s more shine than substance — and about as funny as the market price of a new iPhone.

“Spirited” attempts to invert Dickens’s story, making the ghosts into the heroes. The Ghost of Christmas Present (Will Ferrell) is feeling disillusioned with his haunting job alongside his colleagues Jacob Marley (Patrick Page), the Ghost of Christmas Past (Sunita Mani) and the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come (Loren Woods, and voiced by Tracy Morgan). He’s started to wonder whether their hauntings make any real difference in the world.

For his next redemption project, Present chooses Clint Briggs (Ryan Reynolds), a cynical, self-serving marketing executive who spins lies and manufactures conflicts on social media for a living. He’s a willful Scrooge, a charismatic combination of, as Present says, Mussolini and Ryan Seacrest. As Present helps guide Clint through his Dickensian journey, each step of the way Clint turns the tables, unpacking Present’s existential crisis and the past he himself has tried to avoid.

And did I mention it’s a musical? Yes, “Spirited” makes the bold choice to be a movie musical starring two actors who can’t sing. Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (“La La Land,” “The Greatest Showman”) are among the songwriting team, combining pat lyrics with the forgettable melodies of the composer Dominic Lewis. There’s Chloé Arnold’s showstopping choreography at least, a dazzling combination of tap, hip-hop and jazz performed by a massive ensemble of background singers and dancers. But the combination of this fine-tuned spectacle with the ineffectual vocals of the main duo — and distractingly uncanny visuals and special effects — transforms “Spirited” into a disjointed movie musical with all the superficial trappings of a Broadway flop.

The movie unwisely banks on the marketability of its two lead characters, whose merciless mugging and strong-armed repartee makes for humor as hammy as the honey-glazed cornerstone of a holiday feast. The film also muscles in references to fake news, Twitter trolls and cancel culture (along with a pandemic joke), obnoxiously pointing out its wisecracks as it makes them as though the movie’s meta-awareness absolves it of its tedious comedy — but you can’t have your fruit cake and eat it too.

Two hours is too generous a running time for this film’s sprawling mess of a plot, which uses Reynolds’s story line to deflect from a cliché narrative with a cringe-worthy romantic side plot. The movie ends up jumping around haphazardly from Clint’s arc to Present’s, trying to honor both equally and balance the traditional Christmas carol template with its modern-day twists and reversals.

When Marley appears, with his chains and ghostly baggage in tow, to warn Clint of the hauntings to come, Clint repeatedly interrupts his introduction song to get the story straight: This is going to be “A Christmas Carol,” right? Like “Scrooged”?

“Yes, like the Dickens book and the Bill Murray movie and every other adaptation nobody asked for,” Marley says impatiently.

True — this “Christmas Carol” wasn’t on anyone’s wish list for the holiday. When it comes down to Dickens’s 19th-century classic, Bill Murray and the muppets already wore it best.

Spirited Rated PG-13 for some naughty-list language. Running time: 2 hours 7 minutes. In theaters.

Maya Phillips is a critic at large. She is the author of the poetry collection “Erou” and “NERD: Adventures in Fandom From This Universe to the Multiverse,” forthcoming from Atria Books. More about Maya Phillips

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Review: Will Ferrell and Ryan Reynolds bring holiday bromance to musical-comedy ‘Spirited’

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“Spirited,” the umpteenth screen incarnation of Charles Dickens’ evergreen “A Christmas Carol,” is such an amusing, buoyant and good-natured entertainment that it’s not hard to forgive this flashy musical-comedy-fantasy’s missteps. Grinchy viewers, however, may sing a different tune.

The story’s meta, at times convoluted reimagining, in which rules are seemingly made to be broken (and gleefully so), finds a trio of ghosts representing Christmas Past (Sunita Mani), Present (Will Ferrell) and Yet-to-Come (a shrouded Loren Woods, voiced by Tracy Morgan) tasked every Christmas Eve with rehabilitating one dastardly being for the good of humanity. As it is tidily explained: “We haunt someone, change them into a better person and then we sing about it.”

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It’s quite an expansive and corporatized operation, led by cranky, chain-rattling boss Jacob Marley (Patrick Page). He also oversees an army of “support ghosts” who research the potential “perps” (those ripe for transformation) and help plan the hauntings.

Present, a veteran ghost who “died before there was indoor plumbing,” is torn between finally retiring from the trade and living a “real” life back on Earth or continuing to do the noble work of saving souls. So when he finds someone who’s so far-reachingly problematic as to be considered “unredeemable” — glib, opportunistic marketing magnate Clint Briggs ( Ryan Reynolds ) — he knows he has at least one more rescue mission in him. “He’s like the perfect combination of Mussolini and Seacrest,” Present enthuses to a dubious Marley.

Against his boss’ better judgment, Present invades Clint’s unabashedly selfish life, turns it inside out and upside down — with all the bells and whistles at his supernatural (and the film’s budgetary) disposal — to try to make this Scrooge proxy face his past mistakes and admit the error of his ways. But in this deeply cynical and divisive day and age, is change even possible?

So many twists, turns, reveals and inversions to the action follow — some of which are hugely entertaining, others head-scratching — that too many specifics might edge into spoiler territory. Suffice to say, the road to redeemability is no cakewalk for Clint or Present as they eventually form an unlikely bromance of sorts, replete with a few rather Broadway-worthy musical numbers penned by dynamic duo Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (“Dear Evan Hansen,” “La La Land”) and choreographed by Chloe Arnold. The Victorian London-set “Good Afternoon” is a total showstopper, while “Do a Little Good,” “That Christmas Morning Feelin’” and the (literally) splashy “Ripple” stand out as well.

The plot’s whirling mix also includes Kimberly (the always welcome Octavia Spencer), Clint’s conflicted, right-hand exec and opposition research pro, who will undergo her own emotional shift as she and Present find themselves romantically — and, to be honest, not that convincingly — drawn to each other. (That she can see the ghostly Present while other folks can’t is one of many just-go-with-it bits.)

Clint’s beloved late sister, Carrie (Andrea Anders), her young daughter, Wren (Marlow Barkley), and Clint and Carrie’s brother, Owen (Joe Tippett), also factor into both Clint’s past and present issues. A story strand involving his cavalier “media-savvy” advice to Wren about how to win a middle school election — and its potential backfiring — adds a timely if overly engineered touch. It’s just one of the movie’s handful of “teachable moments.”

Director Sean Anders, who co-wrote the busy, quippy, often digressive script with “Instant Family” and “Daddy’s Home” collaborator John Morris, largely keeps the film moving apace — though at more than two hours, some judicious cutting might have been a plus.

Performances by a nicely modulated Ferrell (back in Christmas-movie mode for the first time since 2003’s “Elf”), a sweetly earnest Spencer and an appealingly kinetic Reynolds are enjoyable, even if there may be no recording contracts in their futures. Possible “Dancing With the Stars” gigs are another story.

'Spirited'

Rated: PG-13, for language, some suggestive material and thematic elements. Running time: 2 hours, 7 minutes Playing: Starts Nov. 11, Regency Bruin Theatre, Westwood and Regal LA Live, downtown Los Angeles; available Nov. 18 on Apple TV+

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‘spirited’ review: will ferrell and ryan reynolds turn ‘a christmas carol’ into a boisterous bro musical.

Octavia Spencer also stars in Sean Anders’ splashy holiday entry for Apple TV+, about spreading goodness in a world turned divisive and mean.

By David Rooney

David Rooney

Chief Film Critic

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Unlike Marley, I love a movie musical. But this is a movie musical made by filmmakers — director Sean Anders and co-writer John Morris, reteaming with Ferrell after the Daddy’s Home comedies — who seem to have no idea how a movie musical works. The songs seldom sprout organically from the narrative, more often feeling shoehorned in to dial up the excitement. What makes them even sloppier is choreography by Chloe Arnold — her regular gig is The Late Late Show with James Corden — that’s all about frenetic movement, never about dance as a storytelling tool.

Benj Pasek and Justin Paul , the music collaborators behind Dear Evan Hansen , La La Land and The Greatest Showman , are capable tunesmiths, so the songs themselves are not bad even if the composers’ love of big emphatic anthems gets tiring. Aside from Page, who has ample musical theater experience, none of the principals can really sing, though they get by, more or less.

But the production numbers are such frantic eyesores, it’s easy to imagine viewers hitting fast-forward when the movie lands on Apple TV+ Nov. 18, following a weeklong stint in theaters — also because those infernal musical interludes push what should be a brisk comedy over the two-hour mark.

“Present” is long overdue for retirement and HR has been nudging him to return to human form on Earth and live out his remaining years. But before he can take that step, Present wants to make a difference, reforming not just another lone perp but someone whose unkindness has a global reach. He finds just the guy in Clint Briggs (Reynolds), a soulless marketing maverick who specializes in creating controversy, conflict and disinformation. “Feed that hate” is his credo.

“He’s like the perfect combination of Mussolini and Seacrest!” enthuses Present. But Marley is unconvinced, describing Clint as “a level-20 pain in the ass” with a file that tags him as “Unredeemable.” Only once before has an Unredeemable been successfully put through the program, and it doesn’t take a trip back in time to Olde England to figure out who that was. But you know we’ll get one anyway.

At every step, Clint appears to prove Marley right, notably when he agrees to help his orphaned niece Wren (Marlow Barkley) get elected student council president by having his resourceful executive assistant Kimberly (Spencer) dig up dirt on the kid’s popular opponent. Smearing an 8th grade boy is all in a day’s work for Clint, but Kimberly has a conscience and of course she’s going to sing about it.

Thankfully, that doesn’t seem to bother Present, who’s touched by Kimberly’s personal reflections and surprised to discover she’s the first person other than a perp who can actually see and hear him. This lays the groundwork for a shy romance that’s one of the more under-developed elements of Anders and Morris’ script.

More consistent focus is given to Present’s determination to find a crack in Clint’s cynical armor, the most likely area being his promise years earlier to his dying sister (Andrea Anders). But Clint is not intimidated by Present or any of his ghostly companions. Instead, he turns the tables on them, finding a particularly malleable plaything when he starts grilling Present about his own past.

This being A Christmas Carol , we know that no matter how convoluted the plotting becomes, it’s going to turn out with lessons learned and dark souls ushered into the light. The film makes some solid points about how online culture has fostered an epidemic of meanness and how choosing kindness is not a single step but a gradual process within reach of all of us. The big all-stops-out finale, “Do a Little Good,” is the best of the songs and also an effective delivery method for that holiday message.

Morgan’s voice work yields some laughs, coming from beneath the grim reaper-style hooded cloak of Christmas Yet-to-Come, and a few star cameos help perk up interest. But Spirited owes its buoyancy primarily to the lively rapport of Ferrell and Reynolds, ultimately playing out the movie’s most convincing love story.

Reynolds’ glib shtick is molded here into an unrepentant, greed-driven A-hole who never met a situation he couldn’t manipulate to his advantage. But somehow, Present’s guilelessness uncovers the residual humanity in him.

Ferrell, who gets the best lines, many of them just throwaways, is an innocent thrust into an existential crisis, a place of chaos and confusion in which the comedian thrives. I could almost forgive all the oafish musical overkill just for the pleasure of watching the ancient spirit Present look up from a TV and announce in a voice filled with wondrous discovery: “I think I might have moderate to severe Crohn’s disease!”

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‘Spirited’ Review: Will Ferrell and Ryan Reynolds Croon Through a Peppy Christmas Musical

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Though the sappy message in “ Spirited ” preaches that people can change, this spiffy musical comedy sure feels like an homage to tried-and-true Hollywood classics. An entertaining holiday jaunt for the whole family, “Spirited” is familiar and formulaic in the best of ways, like a loud sweater or syrupy fireside cocoa. Proudly wearing its adaptation status on its sleeve, “Spirited” turns Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” into a contemporary feel-good comedy — with flashy musical numbers to boot.

Reprising some of the shenanigans of his lovable “Elf” character, reliable funnyman Will Ferrell plays a jovial ghost of Christmas present opposite a dastardly Ryan Reynolds as a modern day Scrooge. Bolstered by a stellar ensemble, both Ferrell and Reynolds make surprisingly charming showmen, impressing with confident crooning — and even some light choreo. It’s refreshing to see two stars who could have easily phoned it in for the rest of their careers push themselves to try new things.

Even more thrilling, they really can sing!

Being a Christmas story for 2022, “Spirited” takes us behind the scenes of the business of haunting people, turning the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future into a massive operation that runs like a singing startup. Tasked with refurbishing the most morally bankrupt souls, these ghosts and their throngs of helpers pore over cartoon files in search of the most entitled Karens to haunt into changing their ways. The movie opens with Ferrell’s character wondering: “Do people really change? I mean real, lasting, positive change.” The rest of the movie hammers home this vaguely altruistic moral compass, spilling a few too many words on this comfortably apolitical message.

Credited simply as “Present,” Ferrell’s character is aided by Past (the charming Sunita Mani), and a faceless grim reaper-like Future (voiced by Tracy Morgan). Ringleader Jake (Patrick Page) has final approval of the “perps,” as they call their targets for rehabilitation by haunting. Ideally they try to choose someone awful who also has power over others, so their turnaround will have a ripple effect and cause exponential good in the world. What with all the evil in the world, Present has become disillusioned with the system and doubtful that his work really makes a difference.

That all changes when he sees Clint Briggs (Reynolds), a ruthless media consultant for hire and expert manipulator. Wearing dastardly villain with his wry toothy smile, the rakish Briggs gets the catchiest numbers, such as the brash sales number “We’re Bringing Back Christmas.” Reynolds glides through the sets like a debonair devil, sowing seeds of greed and mistrust with ridiculous gimmicks, like the ability to switch into a spiffy new suit at the snap of his fingers. This slick character gives the ghosts their toughest challenge yet: Redeeming an “irredeemable.”

There is something undeniably fun about seeing behind the scenes at the haunting factory, which looks and feels like Santa’s workshop by way of the New York Stock Exchange. This bustling scene offers plenty of opportunity for diversions from funny supporting characters, including a delightful detour into Past falling hard for Briggs’ pearly whites.

Present gets his own sweet romance when he becomes enamored with Briggs’ right hand Kimberly (Octavia Spencer), a kindhearted go-getter who feels conflicted by her career choices. Showing off her considerable pipes, Spencer is a pleasant addition to the already stacked cast, and it’s so lovely to see her as a romantic lead, even in a movie as silly as this one.

Sean Anders directs the script he co-wrote with John Morris, the brains behind such illustrious comedies as “Hot Tub Time Machine” and “Daddy’s Home.” The duo’s more sophomoric tendencies are tempered by the earnestness of the original songs, written by “Dear Evan Hansen” duo Benj Pasek and Justin Paul.

As Briggs and Present wear each other down with their escalating tactics, all of the magic and music in “Spirited” eventually gives way to a good old-fashioned bromance. And even though it has the visual appeal of a Gap commercial shot in an Apple store, Anders shoots the well-choreographed numbers with a smooth confidence that suggests a love of old Hollywood musicals.

To borrow one of its sung sentiments, “Spirited” is sure to send out ripples of joy this holiday season. Though it may not make any waves, it’s enough to spread a little good cheer.

“Spirited” premieres in theaters on Friday, November 11 and will start streaming on Apple TV+ on Friday, November 18.

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Nothing makes me feel Scroogier than a slapped-together Christmas movie, which, thanks to the algorithms of tech companies-turned-content creators, start to drop in late October (even before Halloween) at a rate of nearly a dozen a week. This year, Netflix has entries planned with Lindsay Lohan and Freddie Prinze Jr., Disney+ is doing “The Hip Hop Nutcracker,” Lifetime gives us “Merry Textmas” and more, while Hallmark Channel has “#Xmas” and “Three Wise Men and a Baby,” in addition to its annual Luke Macfarlane canoodle.

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Anders knows that today’s audiences don’t want a musical, and so he adopts the unfortunate smart-alecky tone that will come to define this decade of cinema. You know the one: It’s that arm’s-length sense of irony we get in Disney’s “Tangled” or Taika Waititi’s “Thor: Ragnarok,” where the film immediately starts to undermine itself, acting as though audiences have seen the same story a thousand times before and will only go along if the movie is self-aware enough to acknowledge that it’s lame. In “Spirited,” the instant Ferrell bursts into song, Marley interrupts him and begs him to stop. The problem with this meta approach (which is effectively Reynolds’ brand, from “Deadpool” to “Free Guy”) is obvious: When the movie stops taking itself seriously — or sincerely — why should we?

Still, Anders makes sly use of his co-leads’ star personas, contrasting Ferrell’s doofy guilelessness with Reynolds’ relatively sardonic sensibility. And he has a secret weapon in Octavia Spencer, who’s sincerity personified. Clint runs a cutthroat marketing agency, and Spencer plays his right-hand woman, Kimberly, who specializes in digging up dirt on their opponents — even when the “client” is Clint’s eighth-grade niece (Marlow Barkley), and the opponent is the well-meaning classmate she’s running against for student council president. This is a promising subplot, since most “Christmas Carol” adaptations are inherently Capraesque, whereas watching a shark like Clint sink his teeth into a junior high student-government campaign skews closer to David Mamet or Armando Iannucci territory.

After a couple clunky numbers featuring a lot of over-excited choreography and entirely too much tapping, Spencer’s “The View From Here” is the first genuinely good song (with a few more to come): a heartfelt solo from a conflicted good person who sold her soul for a corner office. Kimberly sings to herself in private, but Anders blocks the scene with Ferrell’s “Roberto” (the amusing impromptu alias he assumes when asked) listening in, invisible to her, but clearly smitten in our eyes. Per the movie’s rules, Ferrell’s character is overdue for retirement, and when he does decide to take it, he’ll be permitted to return to Earth and live again. Guess who will motivate him to go back.

For audiences cliché-savvy enough to appreciate the movie’s self-skewering sense of humor, this all plays out pretty much as they’d expect. But that doesn’t mean “Spirited” can’t still surprise. Without spoiling the joke, let’s acknowledge that the film contains the year’s funniest musical number in “Good Afternoon,” a Dickensian duet between Reynolds and Ferrell that ranks right up there with Monty Python’s most irreverent songs — and which ought to appeal to everyone’s inner Scrooge, this grinchy critic’s included.

Reviewed at Crescent Screening Room, Los Angeles, Nov. 7, 2022. MPA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 127 MIN.

• Production: An Apple TV+ release of a Gloria Sanchez, Two Grown Men, Maximum Effort Prods. production. Producers:
• Crew: Director: Sean Anders. Screenplay: Sean Anders, John Morris. Camera: Kramer Morgenthau. Editor: Brad White. Music: Dominic Lewis. Songwriters: Benj Pasek, Justin Paul, Khiyon Hursey, Sukari Jones, Mark Sonnenblick.
• With: Will Ferrell, Ryan Reynolds, Octavia Spencer, Patrick Page, Sunita Mani, Loren Woods, Tracy Morgan, Joe Tippett, Marlow Barkley, Aimee Carrero, Andrea Anders, Jen Tullock.

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Spirited (2022)

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Spirited Review

18 Nov 2022

From The Muppets to Edmund Blackadder, comedy greats have been wringing laughs from  A Christmas Carol  for years now.  Spirited  sees two more — Will Ferrell and Ryan Reynolds — stepping up to take a crack. As the star of  Elf , Ferrell has form when it comes to genuinely funny festive family movies, and  Spirited  is clearly swinging for that film's expert blend of child-like awe and adult-friendly gags. And while it doesn't match up to Jon Favreau 's 2003 classic, there's still much to enjoy here.

In the world of  Spirited , Dickens' one-off haunting has become an annual event. Each Christmas, an entire industry of cheery, headset-wearing spectres must select a new Scrooge-level wrong'un to undergo a redemptive journey into their past, present and future. The Ghost of Christmas Present (Ferrell) spots an ideal target in suave douchebag PR guru Clint (Reynolds), who he sees as "the perfect combination of Mussolini and Seacrest". Soon enough the pair are zipping through formative moments in Clint's life, singing and dancing all the way.

The switching of traditional roles is a neat touch.

Yes: singing and dancing. Because in addition to being a family adventure, a high-concept fantasy and a buddy comedy,  Spirited  is also — somewhat inexplicably — a bona fide musical. The team behind  La La Land , Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, are on song-writing duties here, though you won't find anything quite as catchy as 'City of Stars'; the tunes come thick and fast, though sometimes more 'Humbug' than hum-along.

It's a shame because the initial conceit —  A Christmas Carol  told from the ghosts' perspective — is an interesting one, and there are a few standout comedic moments (Sunita Mani is great as the randy-for-Reynolds Ghost of Christmas Past). The switching of traditional roles is a neat touch, too, as Clint turns the tables to shepherd Present through his own past (if you see what we mean). It makes for an entertaining, if overly-stuffed, romp, and while  Spirited  may not top Kermit and co's festive efforts, it certainly has a lot of fun trying.

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Spirited review – Will Ferrell and Ryan Reynolds hit all the wrong notes in Christmas musical

The two make for an awkward double act in a slick but grating song-and-dance spin on A Christmas Carol that will make grinches of us all

I t’s been almost 20 years since Will Ferrell and Jon Favreau gifted us the unlikely yet enduring Christmas winner Elf, the rare four-quadrant success story that neatly balanced the sweet with the salty. It’s a tricky tightrope that Ferrell’s new festive comedy Spirited precariously wobbles along before almost immediately falling off, a desperate and crudely assembled attempt to recapture that very difficult to capture magic.

It comes from Apple, as one of the tech behemoth’s biggest bets to date (at least $75m was spent just on talent), and suitably has the feeling of something created less by real human people and more calculated by artificial intelligence, heavy emphasis on artificial. It’s a plasticky piece of product with the puppyish insistence that it has the power to please us all, frantically trying to tick every box but failing to hit just one. A meta spin on A Christmas Carol that’s also a bromance comedy but mostly an earnest, full-throated musical was never going to be an easy elevator pitch to untangle but it was enough to spark a bidding war with Apple beating out Netflix, Paramount and Warner Bros.

In the annual flurry of cheaply stuffed Christmas streaming movies, there is a thrill to watching one that wouldn’t pixelate if transferred to a bigger screen and Spirited easily and expensively earns its one-week theatrical release before it heads to your smartphone. It’s all very slickly packaged, even if at points such slickness becomes a little too synthetic, and will probably find a record audience for Apple, a company that’s struggled to find a homegrown blockbuster movie. But while it might be a hit this season, I doubt for many it will have that annual rewatchability factor, a film not for life but just this one Christmas.

In the high-concept world of Spirited, haunting is a business. Every year when Christmas approaches, three ghosts descend upon a figure in need of de-Scrooging, redemption being the ultimate goal. The Ghost of Christmas Present (Ferrell) is edging toward retirement but eager to make an impact before that day comes and so picks Clint Briggs (Ryan Reynolds), a heartless media consultant who spends his life causing conflict for a living. He’s what’s known as an “unredeemable”, someone incapable of real change, but along with Past (Glow’s Sunita Mani) and Future (the voice of Tracy Morgan), he’s determined to finish the job.

New adaptations of the Dickens morality tale are a seasonal staple (this year also sees a Netflix animation with the voices of Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley, the return of Jefferson Mays’ one-man Broadway show and an Adrian Edmondson-led version at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon) and so there is at least some initial inventiveness to be praised in the Daddy’s Home co-writers Sean Anders and John Morris’s distinctive revision. There’s some intricate world-building and the odd deft idea but some less developed joke-writing, a string of misses crashing from the very first scene. While Elf managed to be genuinely funny while also being genuinely sweet, the tone here is far less even. The wink, wink jokes for the adults reek of eye-rolling smugness (it’s the kind of film where a character watches a song-and-dance number and asks “Why are they singing?” to the answer of “Because they’re in a musical”) and this clashes with the film’s often embarrassingly straight-faced earnestness, most visible in the film’s many, many, many musical set pieces.

The decision to make the film a musical is a genuine head-scratcher, one that’s never justified or even mildly explained given that the two leads are not natural singers and so throughout the lunges into song feel awkward at best. With music from the La La Land and The Greatest Showman duo Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, it’s certainly committed to the genre but extravagant staging and enthused backing dancers can’t disguise forgettable, cloying songs and lacklustre singing. It’s closer to watching high-budget karaoke at an office Christmas party. Even when they’re not bursting into song, the two can’t really conjure the necessary star powered chemistry to glide us through. Reynolds’s regurgitated quippy shtick is growing more exhausted by the movie (his character name-checking Scrooged only serves to remind us just how much more well-suited Bill Murray was to the role of grinch) while an unsure Ferrell struggles to flip between serious and silly leaving it up to an underused Octavia Spencer , as assistant-cum-love interest, to walk away with the film, an admittedly easy task given the leaden leads.

Anders, also serving as director, never seems confident enough in what his film should be and so we’re never confident enough in what we’re actually watching, an atonal grab bag of inharmonious notes (an uneasy third act suicide proves to be the flattest). When stretched to a two-hour-plus runtime (with more musical bits during the credits), we leave feeling bloated, a 10-course Christmas meal we wish we’d never started.

Spirited is out in cinemas on 11 November and on Apple TV+ on 18 November

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Common sense media reviewers.

Dickens musical comedy has sweet themes, cursing, slapstick.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

No one is unredeemable: We all have goodness and d

Jacob Marley's operation uses teamwork to save one

The two stars are White men, but there's lots of r

A vehicle strikes a person, but it's presented in

Flirtation, kissing, innuendo.

Frequent use of strong language, including "ass,"

Apple products. Product placement is winked at, wi

A negatively portrayed character is referred to as

Parents need to know that Spirited is a creative musical comedy based on Charles Dickens' classic holiday story A Christmas Carol . This take on the redemption tale flips the script on Marley & Co. by coming at the story from the ghosts' perspective. Although most of the humor is aimed at adults,…

Positive Messages

No one is unredeemable: We all have goodness and decency inside of us somewhere. Your choices make you who you are, and you can choose to do good/be better every day. One person's act of good can create a ripple effect. A subplot addresses the dangers of misusing social media.

Positive Role Models

Jacob Marley's operation uses teamwork to save one soul per year. The Ghost of Christmas Present is perseverant in trying to get through to Clint and help him become a better person. Clint is funny, successful, charismatic, and, initially, quite mean, but the entire story is about people's ability to change. Kimberly is kind, and Owen is a loyal brother and uncle.

Diverse Representations

The two stars are White men, but there's lots of racial and gender representation in supporting and background roles. The story's two romantic leads are middle-aged, reflect body diversity, and are from different racial backgrounds. A Black woman is a talented corporate executive.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Violence & Scariness

A vehicle strikes a person, but it's presented in a way that's more likely to inspire laughs than alarm. Slapstick humor, including falls, being lifted by the crotch, and literal slaps across the face. Some creepy images, but they're quickly shown to be theatrics. It's implied that a teen dies by suicide, and there are sad scenes involving a character with a terminal illness (which leads to parent/child separation).

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Frequent use of strong language, including "ass," "balls," "bitch," "crap," "dammit," "d--k," "diddle," "dumb," "piss," "pr--k," "screw it," "s--tty," "stupid," "suck it," and "what the hell." Middle-finger gesture. Lots of insults, like "dingus."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Apple products. Product placement is winked at, with Sephora as the sponsor, although the store and its products aren't actually highlighted.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

A negatively portrayed character is referred to as a drunk and is seen holding a glass, implying alcohol is in it. Jokes about a beer and an adult offering a child a Negroni.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Spirited is a creative musical comedy based on Charles Dickens ' classic holiday story A Christmas Carol . This take on the redemption tale flips the script on Marley & Co. by coming at the story from the ghosts' perspective. Although most of the humor is aimed at adults, many kids love stars Ryan Reynolds and Will Ferrell , and there's a memorable subplot about a 12-year-old and the dangers of misusing social media. Other themes include teamwork and perseverance. Expect a few creepy moments with the ghosts (and the suggestion of a death by suicide), but given that it's all presented within the context that their appearance is an elaborate production, scares are quickly subdued. There's also plenty of slapstick humor, a bit of innuendo, and a wide assortment of saucy language and inventive insults, including "s--t," "diddling," "d--king," "dingus," and "pr--k") -- a 19th century putdown even gets its own hilarious song and dance number. A negatively portrayed character is referred to as a drunk and is seen holding a glass, with the implication that alcohol is in it. A romantic subplot involves kissing and flirting and features actors in their 50s, which automatically makes them nontraditional love interests. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Based on 33 parent reviews

Suicide, Bad Language but great music

Pg-13, but can be made appropriate for younger kids, what's the story.

In SPIRITED, Jacob Marley's sophisticated soul-saving operation has been successful, choosing one curmudgeon a year to turn around. When the Ghost of Christmas Present ( Will Ferrell ) boldly chooses "irredeemable" marketing consultant Clint Briggs ( Ryan Reynolds ), the Ghost is challenged to examine his own afterlife choices.

Is It Any Good?

For families looking to watch something together over the holidays, this musical comedy is a gift. Getting tweens and teens to watch ye olde A Christmas Carol (at least in its classic 1951 iteration) isn't always easy. But Charles Dickens knew what was what, and his story is one for the ages -- which is exactly why filmmakers try to reinvent it for modern audiences every few years. Spirited nails the 2020s, delivering on viewers' desire for fresh content with humor that skewers everything we hate about what we've become while giving us hope that we can be better. As Clint Briggs, Reynolds is delicious and vicious, embodying the way social media has molded many people into quippy, attractively filtered trolls slinging hot takes while watching the likes rack up. Ferrell's Ghost is, as ever, a goofy man-child whose vulnerability is always showing, allowing viewers to access their own self-doubts and acknowledge their own inner lives. And co-star Octavia Spencer represents the part of us that knows that, while our own road is paved with good intentions, perhaps we wander off of it sometimes, even if, if we're honest, we did know better.

Turning "a carol" into a musical makes good sense, at least for kids who expect a more literal payoff from the title. Of course, not everyone loves a musical, and those viewers are represented by boss Jacob Marley's (Patrick Page) recurring exasperation when the singing starts (it's not really productive, after all). But the lyrics in the original songs from Oscar- and Tony-winning tunesmiths Benj Pasek and Justin Paul ( La La Land , The Greatest Showman ) are funny, meaningful, and sometimes poignant. Even with a too-long run time, Spirited offers a fun family holiday offering that even includes a few references to the reason for the season.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about how Spirited changes the perspective of a literary classic. Think about some of your favorite stories: How might they be told differently from another character's perspective? Why is it important to see things from various points of view?

How is the Marley soul-saving operation an act of compassion? Do you think "bad actors" are deserving of our compassion? Why are stories of redemption important?

What is "spin"? How does Clint Briggs manipulate perceptions to gain public favor, often at the expense of his opponent? Why is it important to use critical thinking when it comes to the information that's presented to us?

What is the movie's take on (and message about) social media ?

How do characters demonstrate perseverance and teamwork ? Why are those important character strengths ?

Movie Details

• In theaters : November 11, 2022
• On DVD or streaming : November 18, 2022
• Cast : Ryan Reynolds , Will Ferrell , Joe Tippett
• Directors : Sean Anders , John Morris
• Studio : Apple TV+
• Genre : Musical
• Topics : Holidays , Music and Sing-Along
• Character Strengths : Perseverance , Teamwork
• Run time : 127 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG-13
• MPAA explanation : language, some suggestive material and thematic elements
• Award : Common Sense Selection
• Last updated : November 11, 2023

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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A Christmas Carol (2020)

Disney's A Christmas Carol

The Muppet Christmas Carol

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Screen Rant

Spirited review: ferrell & reynolds can’t sing but they will make you laugh.

Delivering a crap-talking Christmas musical with a heart of gold is no small feat & even though Spirited isn’t a great movie, it is still a good time.

Will Ferrell and Ryan Reynolds' take on A Christmas Carol is surprisingly moving when all the pieces are in place. Spirited’s open distaste for musicals is never overplayed and the songs themselves won’t blow anyone away, but there aren’t any duds either. Director Sean Anders ( That’s My Boy ), who co-wrote the script with John Morris, is going for a down-the-line Christmas movie with a touch of raunchy humor and he and the entire production team are successful in that. No one will mistake Reynolds and Ferrell for Hall and Oates, but they are rarely asked to stretch their voices. Christmas movies, good or bad, have many ways of being effective. Anders mixed quite a few subgenres to make a solid film. Delivering a crap-talking Christmas musical with a heart of gold is no small feat and, even though Spirited isn’t a great movie, it is still a good time.

In a world where the ghosts of Christmas Present, Past, and Yet-To-Come all work for a well-run conglomerate, one case catches the eye of Present (Ferrell). Clint Briggs (Reynolds) is a modern-day Ebenezer Scrooge who stoops so low as to encourage his young niece to run a smear campaign in her student election. Present steps in and tries to take Clint on a journey alongside Past (Sunita Mani) and Yet-To-Come (Tracy Morgan) , but at every turn Clint's abrasive personality derails them. Present gives in a little and forms a bond with Clint. Clint is even able to glean some private information that makes him realize they have more in common than he initially thought. Their friendship gets Clint back on board, and he eventually sees the error of his ways.

Related: Every Upcoming Ryan Reynolds Movie

The music in Spirited is very talky and not very melodic. Musicals where the cast talks through each musical number often use that to move the story forward. In this case, it is more likely to cover up the leads' vocal limitations. In any case, it is one of the few letdowns of the movie. Ferrell and Reynolds are not moving the plot forward in a song; rather, they're repeating the film's clichés. Present’s boss, in particular, voices their lament whenever a song is about to start in Spirited , and it's a joke that never gets old. The joke is taken one step further as the employees at this fictional company comment on the fact that musicals seemingly take place out of nowhere in their place of work.

The dirty jokes and cursing in Spirited are tuned to just the right frequency. This is not Bad Santa, nor is it Home Alone. And though there is some sexual innuendo, it's based on Ryan Reynolds being attractive. That said, Spirited finds room to be a family film with family-friendly themes without sacrificing any of its humor. The fine line this PG-13 comedy walks is a tightrope, but Anders and his team pull it off.

Where Spirited falls short is in its runtime. At a little over two hours, the film is practically begging for a shorter cut, and it's truly a shame since It's not really any one scene or plot that holds the film back. Sure, Octavia Spencer and Will Ferrell’s characters have a love story that is tacked on at times, but it winds up being one of the more wholesome and meaningful parts of their storylines. Simply put, Spirited's musical numbers needed to be shorter. The film ends on a reprise and the final shot pans to the cast and crew. That image is extraordinary for so many reasons. One can feel the love on set, and it might even bring one to tears. After cutting to black, Ferrell asks if the audience wants to hear another song. It's a reminder that musicals can be fun, but they can also be long.

Spirited is a welcome entry to the slate of Christmas movies. The leads are great in their roles and acceptable as singers. The cast is hilarious and more impressively, almost every joke lands. Apple TV+ hasn’t had much luck outside of Coda in terms of making a splash with their films and Spirited will not change that. But damn it if it isn’t a good old-fashioned and fun Christmas flick.

Next: Slumberland Review: Jason Momoa Shines In Dull Family-Friendly Fantasy Adventure

Spirited is now streaming on Apple TV+. The film is 127 minutes long and rated PG-13 for language, some suggestive material, and thematic elements.

‘Spirited’ Review: Modern-Day Scrooge Turns the Tables in Overstuffed Musical Holiday Tale

Ryan Reynolds and Will Ferrell sing, dance and have a blast, but this Christmas movie’s stocking runneth over

Like a too-generous parent on Christmas morning, “Spirited” keeps doling out the shiny presents long after the recipients are sated. But if there’s a genre that begs to be maximalist, it’s a musical comedy with its roots in Charles Dickens; it’s not so much whether or not you like what “Spirited” has to offer but how much of it you can take in one sitting.

The whole “one sitting” concept may be an outdated one, since this is a film that’s going to live its life (and its Christmases Yet to Come) on Apple TV+, where there’s always a pause button. But viewers who can see “Spirited” projected on the big screen absolutely should, if only to fully appreciate the splashy (sometimes in a literal sense) choreography from Chloe Arnold, one of the film’s true MVPs.

Not that the marquee names are slacking — the teaming of Will Ferrell (making his return to Christmas movies nearly two decades after “Elf”) and Ryan Reynolds delivers the banter you’d expect and the singing and dancing you might not, and their energetic interplay goes a long way to making “Spirited” a movie that might become a holiday go-to in certain households.

Ferrell stars as Present, one of a trio of ghosts who visit a despicable person every Christmas Eve with some redemptive life lessons. (His cohorts are Sunita Mani, as Past, and Tracy Morgan, lending his voice to the cloaked, towering Yet to Come.) Present has been eligible for retirement, which would allow him to return to Earth and live again, for 46 years, but he keeps putting it off.

This year, Present decides their “perp” needs to be slimy strategist Clint Briggs (Reynolds), a media manipulator who skillfully creates scandals to benefit corporations and politicians. (He gets the film’s most holiday-centric number, “Bringin’ Back Christmas,” a cynical ploy to assist Christmas-tree growers by starting a culture war against people who prefer artificial trees.) Despite the warnings from Present’s boss Marley (Patrick Page, “The Gilded Age”) that Clint’s file has been marked “Unredeemable,” Present presses on, at least partially so he can spend more time around Clint’s long-suffering assistant Kimberly (Octavia Spencer), the only mortal who can actually see Present.

Come Christmas night, Clint displays his talent for deflection and changing the subject; he seduces Past in his childhood bedroom and spends the rest of the evening forcing Present to consider his own existence and why he’s been putting off a return to Earth. (It’s not unlike celebrities who eat up interview time by pretending to care all about their interviewers.) Over the course of a raucous (and musical number­–filled) evening, Present and Clint will do their best to break through each other’s defenses before the sun rises Christmas morning.

Director Sean Anders (the “Daddy’s Home” movies), co-writing with John Morris, clearly knows his “Christmas Carol” antecedents : Page’s Marley carries more than a whiff of Michael Hordern’s spectral visitor from the 1951 version; Joe Tippett (“Mare of Easttown”), as Clint’s younger brother, is definitely channeling Bobcat Goldthwait in “Scrooged”; and the Victorian London–set number “Good Afternoon” takes a page from the post-“Oliver!” choreography of 1970’s “Scrooge,” even if the song itself sounds more Seth MacFarlane than Leslie Bricusse.

All the songs, incidentally, are the product of in-demand composers Pasek & Paul, who are admittedly divisive among fans of musical theater, with credits that span “Smash,” “La La Land,” “Dear Evan Hansen,” “The Greatest Showman” and the musical version of “A Christmas Story.” There’s a bit of sameness to their work here, and overall, their compositions land better in a “this is a musical number” context than as “I am one character pouring out their heart.” Many of the songs here are diverting if not immediately catchy, in a score so overstuffed that one of the best songs (“Ripple”) got cut from the movie and now runs alongside the closing credits.

What really makes the numbers pop is Arnold’s choreography, and she allows the ensemble of dancers to show off a variety of moves from traditional tap to splashing around in puddles to pogo-sticking to ice-skating to a sequence involving dozens of flashlights that’s going to be stolen by economical high-school stage productions for decades to come. Reynolds, Ferrell and Spencer won’t have Broadway calling, necessarily, but as vocalists, they definitely sell the material.

It’s when they’re not singing that the two-hour-plus running time of “Spirited” becomes felt; the screenplay doesn’t sell the personal journeys of Present and Clint as well as the songs do, so when the music stops and we get yet another scene of these two guys trying to force each other to become better people, you can feel the movie deflating. Thankfully, the songs come so fast, furious and frequently that the pacing never goes completely off the rails.

Telling “A Christmas Carol” from other points of view isn’t necessarily new: There have been multiple Jacob Marley novels over the years, and even Hallmark Channel managed to get their above-average “Ghosts of Christmas Always” on the air a few weeks before “Spirited” premiered. But fans of Ferrell and Reynolds — and lovers of capital-m Musicals — will be delighted to find this under their tree, even if it’s more than they asked for.

“Spirited” opens in U.S. theaters Nov. 11 and on Apple TV+ Nov. 18.