Spirited

Embarrassed by its own song-and-dance numbers, this self-loathing musical take on A Christmas Carol is an irreverent, duplicitous shambles.

Blah humbug: Ryan Reynolds and Will Ferrell

There’s nowt so queer as movie marketing. The very same day that Netflix releases its musical cartoon Scrooge: A Christmas Carol in cinemas, Apple TV+ streams its own musical take on the Dickensian classic. While they may be very different beasts, they’re both seasonal offerings with songs, dance numbers and the overarching theme of redemption snapped from the jaws of perdition. There’s even a key slap in the face (in both films) to prove that what is unravelling on screen is actually happening. Sean Anders’ Spirited is the more left-field of the two, with Jacob Marley (Patrick Page) even expressing his distaste for the musical numbers. So this takes the multiversal universality of the tale and throws it up in the air hoping that something – anything – might stick.

Will Ferrell is the Ghost of Christmas Present, a spirit who believes that nobody is irredeemable. Ryan Reynolds is Clint Briggs, the Irredeemable, a corporate blowhard who cares only for money and the escalating sales of real Christmas trees, irrespective of the environmental damage. And so Ferrell, the actor, re-visits the festive fantasy of Elf, hoping to score another cult classic, with knobs on. There is a lot of winking at the fourth wall here, as if to minimise the ickiness, while pouring on more gloop than you’d find at an orphans’ custard pie convention. It’s a bizarre blend of the anarchic and sentimental, a tsunami of gushing wokery with a dirty mouth. Both Ferrell and Reynolds fall for women of colour, while Reynolds even gets to bed the Ghost of Christmas Past (Sunita Mani). Quite what mixed messages older children will get is anybody’s guess.

Clint Briggs knows his Dickens. When first confronted by Marley’s Ghost he asks, is “this like A Christmas Carol? The Dickens story? The Bill Murray movie with Bobcat Goldthwait?” To which Marley replies, “Yes! Yes! Like the Dickens book and the Bill Murray movie and every other adaptation nobody asked for!” The trouble with Spirited is that it really wants to be another adaptation and the gags are accompanied by an orchestral flourish, which deadens the effect. While the musical numbers are actually well choreographed, and the dancers more than up to the task, it’s the incidental score that kills the film dead (complete with choirs, harp glissandos and the like). This is, after all, from the director of Sex Drive, That’s My Boy and Horrible Bosses 2. But the songs are by none other than Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, who brought us La La Land and The Greatest Showman, which is why some of the lyrics seem eminently superior to the material they adorn (Reynolds, singing: “I used to think that I was sure/ Of what made people tick”; Ferrell, answering: “You strip ‘em down right to their core/ And find a self-centred prick”).

One can but hope that Ferrell and Reynolds enjoyed themselves. They certainly did during the musical number ‘Good Afternoon’ set in Victorian London, in which Reynolds sings in an English accent (several English accents, actually). That scene alone might provide Spirited with a certain cult novelty. Spotting a familiar face on the street, Reynolds asks, “Was that Judi Dench? I loved her in Chocolate!”  Ultimately, though, watching the film is like being beaten over the head by a fully-lit Christmas tree, even if a few comic squeaks slip through. One suspects that Reynolds might have ad-libbed many of his own lines.

JAMES CAMERON-WILSON

Cast: Will Ferrell, Ryan Reynolds, Octavia Spencer, Sunita Mani, Patrick Page, Marlow Barkley, Tracy Morgan (voice only), Andrea Anders, Joe Tippett, Jen Tullock, Loren Woods, Aimee Carrero, Rose Byrne, P.J. Byrne, Lily Sullivan, Judi Dench, Jimmy Fallon. 

Dir Sean Anders, Pro Sean Anders, George Dewey, Jessica Elbaum, John Morris, Will Ferrell and David Koplan, Screenplay Sean Anders and John Morris, Ph Kramer Morgenthau, Pro Des Clayton Hartley, Ed Brad Wilhite, Music Dominic Lewis; songs by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, Costumes Erin Benach, Sound Harry Cohen, Dialect coach Nadia Venesse. 

Apple Original Films/Gloria Sanchez Productions/Maximum Effort/Mosaic/Two Grown Men-Apple TV+.
126 mins. USA. 2022. UK and US Rel: 18 November 2022. Cert. 12A.