Mark Reviews Movies: SPIRITED

Spirited, Apple Studios

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Review by Mark Dujsik | November 10, 2022

Everyone knows the story of A Christmas Carol, and the somewhat clever premise of Spirited presumes that Charles Dickens was working from a true story of a real-life and life-changing haunting. The phenomenon continues in the world of co-screenwriter/director Sean Anders' film, in which ghosts from the afterlife try to change a bad person into a decent one every Christmas Eve night.

This is a comedy, equally sweet and bitter, optimistic and cynical, and taking its message seriously and letting just about everything else serve as a gag. That the material works owes a good-sized debt to its game cast, but Anders' ability to manage the disparate tones and ideas within this generally silly but ultimately sincere tale shouldn't be taken for granted, either.

That story opens with a familiar scene. A tortured soul, who has just gone through a series of visions explaining the erroneous morality of her ways, is confronted with the inevitable prospect of her death. Standing in a cemetery in front of her own future tombstone, this woman promises to change her ways and become a better person (The woman, by the way, is played by Rose Byrne in a cameo that isn't the most surprising one here).

All of this, of course, is the result of some supernatural therapy, performed by three ghosts. The main crew is made up of Present (Will Ferrell), Past (Sunita Mani), and Yet-To-Come (a specter-of-death puppet, performed by Loren G. Woods and, when the phantom isn't communicating exclusively by ominously pointing at things, voiced by Tracy Morgan).

The operation, working from jolly but bureaucratic office space of some life after death, is overseen by Marley (Patrick Page), and yes, this is the very same Marley from the Dickens story, rattling his otherworldly chains to introduce the worst of the worst to a night of converting fright but a stickler of a boss at the office. As for whether or not any of the other characters from that famous story appear here, that's best left to be discovered—well, quickly guessed at and then happily confirmed later.

The central plot revolves around Present's insistence to change the life, outlook, attitude, and behavior of one really bad customer—an "unredeemable" man, according to the big stamp on the front of his file. He's Clint Briggs (Ryan Reynolds), a PR guy who specializes in creating false controversy and manufactured conflict on the behalf of his clients. By the end of a big musical number at a conference for Christmas tree growers, he has the room celebrating, calling for some terrible fate to befall anyone with a plastic tree, and fighting amongst themselves.

Yes, this is a musical—or, at least, Anders and John Morris' screenplay purports it to be one. The afterlife is one big musical, apparently, although people in the mortal realm break into song and dance at times, as well. The logic behind the gimmick is fundamentally inconsistent, but when the songs are as musically peppy and lyrically cheeky as some of the ones here, it almost feels like a terrible mistake to point out the film's own blunder.

It's not really a musical, after all, since songs are promised then ceased, suddenly interrupted, and remain absent for a long stretch of the second act. The joke is that the story is a musical only when it needs to be, but when it is one, Anders shoots it with wide shots suggesting an elaborate stage production (The gloss in such sequences makes sense, but there is an unfortunate degree of green-screen shimmer to multiple other scenes).

Anyway, Clint is a pretty terrible guy, creating a culture war over trees and convincing his orphaned, grade-school-aged niece (played by Marlow Barkley) that she needs to destroy her opponent's reputation to win a student council election. For his part, Present convinces Marley to spend an entire year researching Clint, planning re-creations of his past, and hoping that someone deemed irredeemable can change.

When Christmas Eve arrives, Clint knows the plan (He does, obviously, have an awareness of the Dickens story and that one Bill Murray movie). He has no intention of changing, and using his underhanded techniques, Clint tries to worm his way out of moral redemption.

That's a pretty crafty turnaround, and since it's Reynolds playing the skeptical and conniving smart-ass, the scheme is a funny one, too. He knowingly flirts with Past, who's plainly attracted to him. Clint even gets Present to open up about his own past, which brings things back to the time of Dickens, puts an amusing perspective on very first scrooge's change of heart, and makes a boisterous musical number out of an everyday greeting that, apparently, once had a far more vulgar meaning.

Ferrell has some fun as the naïve ghost, dedicated to changing the world one person at a time but secretly longing for a normal, mortal life again. When he sees Clint's right-hand woman Kimberly (Octavia Spencer, in her natural mode of getting to the core of a character and elevating every scene she's in) undergoing a crisis of conscience, Present starts to think such a life might be possible—and fears that he might not be worthy of it.

There are some fundamental questions about human nature being explored here, and for all of the big personalities and bigger attempts at joke-making on display, the film comes across as sincere in its debates about whether or not people are truly capable of change. That Spirited has a well-considered and well-meaning message is nice, but for the most part, the film is a fun and funny riff on a familiar conceit.

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