Is the end of February too late to share thoughts on Spirited? :-) I actually started writing this review in December. But what with one thing and another, I got way, way behind. I guess I could always wait till next December, but I'd really like to just get this done and off my plate, so with your kind indulgence, let's have a little Christmas in February!
I've seen Spirited called A Christmas Carol from the ghosts' perspective. That's only partially true. It's not actually an adaptation or a remake of A Christmas Carol; rather, it's a peek into a world where A Christmas Carol has played out over and over again through the years, every year targeting a new Scrooge. But yes, it does give us the ghosts' point of view on the process -- one ghost's in particular.
Will Ferrell stars as the Ghost of Christmas Present, who's eager to reel in a really big fish this year. He advocates for Clint Briggs (Ryan Reynolds), a social media consultant who has no qualms about using every dirty trick he can come up with on his clients' behalf. Though Clint is considered "unredeemable," Present prevails, and Clint becomes this year's Scrooge. But things go awry when Clint seduces the Ghost of Christmas Past (Sunita Mani); Present falls for Clint's assistant, Kimberly (Octavia Spencer); and Clint starts deducing Present's weaknesses and pushing back.
The choice of a profession for Clint is one of the most inspired parts of the movie. It's timely, and it gives him the kind of personality that works perfectly for this setup: stubborn, trollish, and with no introspection whatsoever. On the down side, expending all his energies on resisting the character arc that's being imposed on him leaves him without much of a character arc at all. Kimberly and Present fare somewhat better in this area. Kimberly's a nice person who got sucked into doing the dirty work for an amoral boss, and has some tough choices to make about whether to keep it up, while Present has a murky background of his own and mixed feelings about potential retirement.
The production values, the dialogue, the choreography, the whole vibe of the film are shiny and slick and hyperactive. In a way this all fits with Clint's used-car-salesman persona and with the bro-ish relationship he develops with Present. Again, it feels very timely, but it makes the film a little too self-consciously cute for its own good. (I find myself wondering just how dated it's going to feel in, say, ten years or so.) The choreography in particular was skilled but very generic. Crowds of dancers would erupt out of the woodwork and pull off a big musical number with aplomb, but no apparent connection to the characters or the viewers or anything that was going on. In fact, most of these numbers felt more like big Broadway production numbers than organic routines rising naturally out of the plot (I honestly wouldn't be surprised to see this come to Broadway one of these days, and it might even work better there). There were a few exceptions--notably Octavia Spencer's wistful and well-sung "The View from Here," and the showstopping "Good Afternoon," which feeds off Reynolds's and Ferrell's chemistry to become something truly electrifying.
So there were several things to like here, but they tended to get overwhelmed by a film that was so busy and overlong that it felt tiring. I found parts of Spirited quite enjoyable, but I can't see myself sitting all the way through it again.
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