Christmas films can be divisive things. For every person who needs to choke back a sob over Zuzu’s petals in order to feel truly festive, there is another for whom only an 8 week binge of Channel 5’s kindly cupcake cafe owners and selfish businesswomen meeting the interchangeable men of their dreams will suffice.

Yet once in a while a filmmaker crafts a beautiful sparkly bridge that unites the factions and has the chutzpah and baubles to fill even the hardest heart with holiday cheer. One to break out after boardgame controversies and tearful post-sherry fallouts. This Christmas season that audacious movie is Spirited.

Ebenezer (Will Ferrell) has it good. Once the scourge of the poor and vulnerable, Scrooge lived his final days with kindness and generosity and he knew how to keep Christmas well… Which is handy because in his afterlife Scrooge has reunited with Marley and become the Ghost of Christmas Present!

Redeeming souls is a huge production and Jacob Marley (Patrick Page) couldn’t put on The Show without his dedicated team. But good old Present is his right-hand man; the professional fixer who swoops in after chains have been jangled and the past revisited; guiding this year’s target through their supernatural simulation to their spiritual rebirth with empathy. Every. Single Year.

Until this Christmas. Clint Briggs (Ryan Reynolds) believes that people are lazy and desperate and, as a gifted media consultant, he is marvellous at bringing out the worst in them! Present is dazzled by the darkness he sees in Clint during a particularly tuneful sales pitch to the National Association of Christmas Tree Growers and, motivated by worries of his own, decides to make a last-minute change…

Just as Scrooge once had Bob Cratchit as the force for good in his life, Clint has the kind-hearted Kimberly (Octavia Spencer) as a buffer between his cruellest intentions and the people they could affect. The difficult childhood Clint and his siblings went through made him vow to deflect future pain with detachment. Even the loss of his sister couldn’t crack the veneer.

A new temptation to use his disengagement for bad surfaces when niece Wren (Marlow Barkley) enlists him to help with her student council run. But Present persists with his mission to smash through all that dastardly stuff and rescue Clint’s unredeemable soul before it is too late. He is aided in his quest by the moony-eyed Past (Sunita Mani), Yet-to-Come (Tracy Morgan with Loren G. Woods) and an all-singing, all-dancing crew.

Is Spirited cheesy? Yes. Obviously. It’s cheesier than a tractor-tyre-sized cheddar truckle. It is a Christmas Carol musical with Will Ferrell and Ryan Reynolds after all. But a grown man who thought he was an elf once taught us that the best way to spread Christmas cheer is singing loud for all to hear. And Ferrell, Reynolds, Spencer et al put everything into selling us on some dazzling set pieces. Resisting the joy will be futile.

It helps that Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (La La Land, The Greatest Showman) have crafted songs that are witty and crammed with bittersweet, if rather generic, charm. Kimberly’s solo – The View From Here – is the standout. While director Sean Anders and cinematographer Kramer Morgenthau keep us engaged with our heroes’ memoryscapes as they flash by. However, it is ultimately Ferrell and Reynolds’ who carry this feature with their charisma. From swearing on the streets of Victorian London to brotherly bickering or frustrating Marley mid-haunt, they’re entertainment personified.

By the time Clint sweet-talks Present into giving life another chance Spirited has you. Like being punched in the face with a candy cane; the sudden sugar rush of festive feels is sickly but irresistible. Spirited is a proper Christmas cracker and destined to become an annual rewatch.

Spirited stole through my cynicism about the redundancy of a new Dickens adaptation (Bill Murray and The Muppets already have us covered!) because, though it is not a cinematic masterpiece, it is fa la la la lovely. And these days loveliness is a jolly welcome gift.

Spirited will be released in UK cinemas and on the Apple TV+ platform on November 18th

REVIEW OVERVIEW
Spirited
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Emily Breen began writing for HeyUGuys in 2009. She favours pretzels over popcorn and rarely watches trailers as she is working hard to overcome a compulsion to ‘solve’ plots. Her trusty top five films are: Betty Blue, The Red Shoes, The Princess Bride, The Age of Innocence and The Philadelphia Story. She is troubled by people who think Tom Hanks was in The Philadelphia Story and by other human beings existing when she is at the cinema.
spirited-reviewLike being punched in the face with a candy cane; the sudden sugar rush of festive feels is sickly but irresistible. Spirited is a proper Christmas cracker and destined to become an annual rewatch.