Spirited

Spirited

Each Christmas Eve, the Ghost of Christmas Present selects one dark soul to be reformed by a visit from three spirits. But this season, he picked the wrong Scrooge. Clint Briggs turns the tables on his ghostly host until Present finds himself reexamining his own past, present and future.

  • Released: 2022-11-11
  • Runtime: 120 minutes
  • Genre: Comedy
  • Stars: Ryan Reynolds, Will Ferrell, Octavia Spencer, Sunita Mani, Aimee Carrero, Joe Tippett, Marlow Barkley, Maximilian Lee Piazza, Jen Tullock, Anne Reardon, Nico Tirozzi, Billy Concha, Peter Brownlee, Woody Fu, Brian Bradbury, Maddox Dalton, Daelan Dalton, Arasha Lalani
  • Director: Sean Anders
 Comments
  • rodrigo-morna - 6 February 2024
    Man... Will Ferrell Can't Sing
    Actually most of the mains actors/actress can't. Which makes this movie a bold move as it heavily leans into musical numbers. But... somehow it still works. The background dancers are great and the musical numbers have incredible production value. The middle of the movie can be a bit slow but if you stick it out the ending is incredibly worth it and honestly redeems the entire movie. So yes most of the characters can't sing but you know what. That's fine neither can most of us. The movie is good and worth a watch to the end. I could easily see this movie becoming a holiday season tradition in households.
  • giacnan - 2 January 2024
    We need more messages like this
    Ignore the naysayers for sure. Just give it a watch and don't read the reviews. I never look at reviews anyway, and here I am writing one haha. If it has a good, positive message, especially for kids, it's worth sharing.

    I was a little skeptical at first because it was a musical and I'm not heavy on them, but I had to give it a chance because well it's Will Ferrell and Ryan Reynolds is cool too. I love how they brought up the bullying aspect with the kids. Touching on that is so important these days because social media can be a nightmare for kids, especially with cyber bullying. It was done very creatively overall, pretty cool concepts all things considered.
  • essieluvsu - 23 December 2023
    Just fine
    Good little film to that has strong performances and some nice songs. I would say it sits in the middle pack of Christmas films. Some people will be put off by the musical aspect but if you give it a chance the songs are well structured.

    The theme of division in this country is a little on the nose but at the same time not untrue. There is a feeling of striking at something going on at the business level of America with selling tribalism.

    Jokes here are a bit on the safe side and too often drift into current references but overall an enjoyable little film for the holidays to watch with your loved ones.
  • lpease - 2 January 2023
    My favorite movie musical ever - and I LOVED The Greatest Showman
    This was just SO AMAZINGLY GOOD on every level. The writing. The acting. The singing. THE DANCING and choreography were so incredible. I have watched it nearly every say since I saw it a month ago. I start other movies but keep longing for another shot of this one. Why? Because it's about joy, love, redemption, fear, and overcoming fear. And it's done to incredible music. With great shots. Truly - this should be up for best picture. The humor is just right - not too much, not dumb. The pacing is tight. The story arcs, plural, and beautifully done. This is what it looks like when you get a team of people who know what they are doing together.

    I wish I could hug and kiss everyone involved for this lovely gift, which I will enjoy year round for decades to come!
  • pevldq - 30 December 2022
    Fun and enjoyable to watch
    I liked the premise of a twist on the traditional A Christmas Carol story. I also happen to enjoy song and dance numbers. I started watching, just to get an idea what it was about and I ended up watching the whole movie.

    I liked the twists in the tale, so to speak and I found it funny as well. Like Elf, it's a funny "feel good" movie for the Christmas season.

    The ending was a bit of a surprise. I didn't see that coming. Maybe the only part I'm not sure they should have done is the last scene. It might have been better if it wasn't quite so rosyly tied up at the end.

    I also liked the final credits number.
  • jcw-23212 - 27 December 2022
    Watered-down version of original Dickens tale
    I understand this is a comedy, but it is still a Christmas Movie. Scrooged was hilarious, but still managed to stay true to the original spirit of A Christmas Carol. Spirited is too unnecessarily satirical to send a meaningful message across the board, and I believe it would have been better if it were less meta and tried to be independent of A Christmas Carol and Scrooged instead of directly referencing the in the script.

    Loved the cast and the soundtrack, but the writing & direction just weren't there. It was less of a Christmas movie and more of a generic transformative comedy set during Christmastime. Case in point being how Ryan Reynolds' character mentions plans to create a "Ghost of Ramadan past" and "Ghost of Hannukah yet-to-come" moving forward.

    I didn't like the idea that there was a company of spirits that cashes off of Christmas spirit to transform people, instead of genuinely trying to show people the "true meaning of Christmas" (which was the original intent of A Christmas Carol) with the secondary goal of changing them for the better.
  • peterscousemurphy - 25 December 2022
    Breath of fresh air.
    I'll admit going into this I was sceptical, I wasn't the biggest fan of Will Ferrell. So when my partner chose this to watch I wasn't looking forward to it.

    Not long into the movie my opinion had changed it was funny. Not a movie you should take seriously like the way it mocks itself. The songs were catchy and the story well written. It's a fresh take on the Charles Dickens classic with Ryan Reynolds doing what he does best. I fully enjoyed the movie, the only reason I don't rate it a ten was the predictability. Halfway through I knew how it was going to end. Other than that I highly recommend.

    Good Afternoon!
  • BroadSword66 - 24 December 2022
    Making a song and dance out of Scrooge
    What the Dickens?! Yet another version of A Christmas Carol? Well, sort of. This is almost a sequel to the famous tale, and that is a great idea.

    Sadly, it's a great idea told really badly in an exhausting slush of convoluted plot, confused characters, a comedy script light on jokes and heavy on obvious meta-commentary, lightweight performances and songs, songs, songs. So many soundalike songs!

    It's all too much and not enough: a clever story, just not clever enough; stars who are charming but not charming enough; a musical that's full of music, but none of it memorable or entertaining. Songs are used to tell the story rather than illustrate or expand it. It's hardwork.

    And once again we are presented with the supernatural reduced to the mundanity of an office-based corporation (a trope that has been done to death in festive films from The Santa Clause to Arthur Christmas). What should be magical and otherworldly is reduced to a workaday product. This time it's redemption that is given the bland capitalist makeover. Jacob Marley and the Spirits of Christmas run a sort-of business (mankind is their business!) in which every year they find miseries, misers and moaners and teach them to be nice, just as they once did with Scrooge in Victorian times.

    Now, though, in the current era, the worst example of humanity they can find is a PR-man called Clint who, in his professional life, is shady and cut-throat but who, because he's played by Ryan Reynolds, is still quite nice, twinkly, and "hot". It's impossible to dislike Clint, which is a big problem for the plot and a big example of the movie's muddled storytelling.

    Leading the Spirits is Will Farrell as Christmas Present, although you'd never know it to look at him. He rejects the traditional fur-trimmed robe, big white beard and genial good humour in favour of being Will Farrell: doddery, anxiety-riddled, hesitant Will Farrell. He's not a happy (or funny) ghost.

    Can unconfident, incompetent Present convince Clint to mend his less-than-perfectly nice personality? Or will Clint turn the tables on the Spirit and convince him to give up on his haunting, unsatisfying afterlife?

    That's an interesting spin on the familiar Dickens classic, and there are more twists revealed. But it is unsure of its own story, too long, too slow and often - unredeemably - dull. It's rather patronising, too.

    Did I mention the songs? Even though the film breaks the fourth wall to comment on the fact that "the afterlife is a musical" and not everyone likes the fact, that's not enough to excuse the lyrics-heavy, uninspired songs and monotonous, genetic choreography.

    Spirited tries hard to do something new with Dickens' perennial tale, but badly misses the mark. Bah. Humbug!
  • lukenally - 23 December 2022
    Not as expected
    After reading critics reviews I fully expected this to be a drab and soulless film that was just another rehash or the same story. It wasn't and I really enjoyed this. Both Ferrel and Reynolds were really enjoyable and the supporting cast were great too. It never really gave itself time to get too deep, or to really care about the characters that much, but there was enough going on to make it fun and enjoyable.

    It isn't really for kids below 12, not because it's suggestive or had any violence / swearing in it, just because of the premise really.

    Very much worth a watch, or maybe because it's Christmas I enjoyed it more.
  • fannysbayoysters - 23 December 2022
    Musical Banana Sack
    If this film didn't hit you over the head with so many songs in the first twenty minutes, with so many back-to-back songs in the first twenty minutes, which were clearly filmed first and sequentially linear according to the script, as noted by Mr. Reynolds' and Mr Farrell's dance chemistry, which begins like a soggy nacho punking a wet bag, but by films' end is like a toucan gracefully mounting a rainbow, if the first twenty minutes didn't rely so much on song to info dump plot on us, and was rewritten to better allow characters to not sing, and carried us a good forty-five minutes into the film, all the while allowing characters to arc and the plot to palsy in a generally upward direction, until an appropriate moment presented itself for the cast to sing, as the song conforms to the plot, without the plot conforming to the song, and was edited by Molly Marlene Stensgård, and was directed by Ivo Van Hove, and had a panto cameo by Bruno Gerusi, this film would be dope.