Spirited

This weekend, Spirited, A modern-day musical telling of A Christmas Carol released on Apple TV+. Spirited follows The Ghost of Christmas Present (Will Ferrell) as he attempts to help save an unredeemable man, Clint Briggs (Ryan Reynolds). On his journey, he begins to examine his own life and discovers that life is more complicated than being purely good or bad.

This movie was a lot of fun to watch. Ryan Reynolds and Will Ferrell are both very enjoyable to watch, have great chemistry together, and can play off of each other so well. This movie has some very funny moments, as one would expect from these actors, and is also very sweet and heartwarming. It was interesting to see the tired tale of A Christmas Carol reimagined into the modern day and to see it from the perspective of one of the ghosts instead of the Scrooge character. Having the film from this perspective gives a totally different vibe to the story as you get to experience not only the "Scrooge" character grow and change but also the Ghost of Christmas Present. It is also fun to see the other ghosts, such as the Ghost of Christmas Past and the Ghost of Christmas Future given more of a personality. Finally, as this is a musical, we have to talk about the music in the film. The music is so good and really fun to listen to. There were several songs that I really enjoyed that continue to be stuck in my head days after seeing the movie. It was also really fun to see Ryan Reynolds and Will Ferrell singing together as they both sounded surprisingly good. In the end, this was just a heartwarming fun story that I will probably watch every Christmas.

Sadly, there are a couple of issues that hold the movie back for me. The main issue is that there was just too much going on and too many different plot points there were being juggled. The story was about Ryan Reynolds going through the journey of becoming a better person, Will Ferrell finding his place in the world, a romance between Octavia Spencer and Will Ferrell, and other smaller subplots. Having this many things going on makes it a bit difficult to track with the film causing me to struggle to determine whether the story was centered on Will Ferrell or Ryan Reynolds as well as causing the Octavia Spencer character to be more sidelined than she should have been. The other issue I had was that the film didn't quite stick the landing. I felt the ending went on a bit too long and the message at the end really conflicted with the message throughout the film.

Overall, this film was a lot of fun with really good music, fun characters, and a heartwarming story. However, being a bit too overstuffed on a story level and conflicting in the messaging kept it from being a top-tier Christmas movie. Regardless of its issues, I still really enjoyed the film and will likely plan to watch it every Christmas.

Score: 7.5/10 Grade: B Recommendation: Check this one out.