Doctor Who<\/a> found room for flying sharks.<\/p>\nEven so, co-writer\/director Sean Anders\u2019 twist \u2013 despite its manifold flaws \u2013 finds fresh scope for elaboration in Dickens\u2019s redemptive fable, give or take intermittent lapses into over-familiar, over-egged schmaltz.<\/p>\n
Featuring songs by Benj Pasek, Justin Paul (both of La La Land and The Greatest Showman fame), Khiyon Hursey, Sukari Jones and Mark Sonnenblick, Spirited is a musical variation on Dickens, brimming with often excessive but exuberant showtune set-pieces.<\/p>\n
At its core is a nifty conceit pitched somewhere between Charlie Kaufman and Monsters, Inc., wherein the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet-to-Come are part of a secret company of spectres whose job involves turning bad eggs good. They scare because they care, essentially.<\/p>
Almost 20 years after he banked a seasonal staple in Elf, Will Ferrell assumes a more restrained guise as the Ghost of Christmas Present. Ferrell\u2019s spectre has been in the job for two centuries, working alongside \u2013 as credited \u2013 Past (Sunita Mani) and Yet-to-Come (Loren Woods, voice by Tracy Morgan). While Yet-to-Come aspires to do more than just point ominously, Present is overdue for retirement, which here means a return to the living world.<\/p>\n
But Ferrell\u2019s long-haul redeemer can\u2019t resist a challenge, which he finds in Ryan Reynolds\u2019 Clint Briggs, a PR cad who thinks nothing of smearing his niece\u2019s tween competitors on social media in order to help her school election bid. Present wants to work some redemptive magic, but might Clint be truly \u201cunredeemable\u201d?<\/p>\n
If the answer emerges too slowly over Spirited\u2019s 127-minute sprawl, there\u2019s still fun to be had as Clint turns the tables on Present, intent on finding out what is going on in the ghost\u2019s afterlife. And, of course, there are songs and dancing, all dressed up like the gaudiest Christmas shopping mall you ever wanted to run away from.<\/p>\n
Reynolds\u2019s brassy opening showtune is droll and playful, with the none-more-seasonal phrase \u201csame-day shipping\u201d smartly worked in, but the busy surrounding choreography sometimes seems designed to induce dizziness.<\/p>\n