Spirited (2022, dir. Sean Anders, US) by Kymm Zuckert

“Why are they singing?”

“Oh, because this is a musical.”

“What is?”

“All of this. The afterlife.”

The second big Christmas Carol remake of the season, this one being modernized, musicalized, and Will Ferrell/Ryan Reynolds-ized. 

It starts at what is usually nearly the end, with the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come in the graveyard, pointing portentously at a gravestone and Scrooge trembling before it, promising to be a better man. 

Except wait, it’s not Victorian Scrooge, it’s a modern woman, perhaps the kind usually described by a name starting with a K, promising to not yell at the neighbour’s kids anymore. She sinks into the grave, and…that’s a wrap! 

Not of a movie, but of a supernatural simulation, and Past (Sunita Mani), Future (Tracy Morgan), and Present (Will Ferrell), all break for coffee, happy in the knowledge of a job well done. 

We see the huge, ghost-run operation, headed by Mr. Marley (Patrick Page), and then they see that the lady has turned over a new leaf. The Ghost bit worked!! But we are only six minutes in, and we haven’t seen Ryan Reynolds yet, so I’m pretty sure there’s more. 

Next: big production number! Halfway through the song, I put the whole album on my Spotify Xmas playlist. 

Present sneaks away from the big party, and Margo from H.R. comes to tell him he has been eligible for retirement, i.e. being reborn, for 46 seasons, but he is afraid to go back, as he messed it up the first time. 

The Ghosts scout out their project for next Christmas, checking out a jerk who runs a hotel in Vancouver, but then, Present spies a really GIGANTIC a-hole in the guise of Ryan Reynolds as Clint Briggs, a media consultant, giving a speech to an extremely disgruntled group of Christmas tree growers, with his dead-faced assistant, Kimberly (Octavia Spencer) standing glumly in the wings. Call me crazy, but this might just be the guy!

Then he starts singing about how people need to not only love real Christmas trees, but hate people who buy fake ones. Present says, “He’s like the perfect combination of Mussolini and Seacrest.”

I don’t think I have stopped smiling for a moment since I turned this film on. Not even twenty minutes in, and it’s going on the permanent yearly watch list with Elf and Alastair Sim’s Christmas Carol. 

Marley refuses to have Clint be the project for next year, because he is an Unredeemable. Present starts singing which makes Marley cave, and then comes a montage of them spending whole year preparing. 

Clint has a brother who is raising the daughter of their late sister, they come to Clint because she, Wren, wants to run for student body president, and she wants Clint’s help. Clint reluctantly agrees, then gives a ton of really terrible advice about how to trash your opponent, etc. 

Kimberly goes off to dig up some dirt on the child opposition, despising herself, wanting to quit, but unable to. Present empathizes enough that suddenly, she can see him! So things are definitely all at sixes and sevens. 

Then, it’s time for the whole show to start, will Past, Future, and especially Present, manage to make this slick huckster with no soul change? Will Present decide to retire, come back to earth and live a new life, possibly with Kimberly? There is no way that won’t be the ending, but I think the journey there will be hilarious, touching, and with quite a few songs along the way. 

It’s entirely charming, it’s funny, it’s moving, the songs are swell, and even though Ryan plays a cynical character in the beginning, the film itself isn’t cynical. Will and Ryan have great chemistry, I’d see them in one hundred movies together, and I love Will and Octavia together. 

Spirited is a treat, and, I feel confident in saying, a new Christmas classic. 

Kymm Zuckert is an actor/writer/native Angelino. When Kymm was a child, her parents would take her to see anything, which means that sometimes she will see a film today and say, “I saw that when I was eight, I don’t remember any of that inappropriate sex stuff!” Check out her entire 365 day blog @ https://365filmsin365days.movie.blog