"It doesn't break any new ground, but I think people can have a good time with it"

Spirited has quite the quirky cast; Will Ferrell and Ryan Reynolds have always been delightful leading actors to watch in my opinion. Hearing them do a Christmas musical piqued my interest but although, as much as I love them, this never screamed; Wow I absolutely must watch this Christmas Movie! After sitting down and watching it, for a bit I was very happy I made the decision, to watch this as there are so many other Christmas films on my wish list. But make no mistake, it's far from perfect. If you want to see a movie with a holiday vibe and lots of music, Spirited might be the movie for you. There's a reason I like this even though there are issues with it.

In this rerun of the Charles Dickens classic A Christmas Carol, Spirited essentially sees the ghost of Christmas Present (Will Ferrell) travel to try to change a man who has lost his way as a kind person, Clint Briggs (Ryan Reynolds).

Considered irredeemable, he sincerely believes he can change him for the better. This leads to many musical numbers about family, vacations, and many other topics, and all of them generally work well for the most part. Whenever Reynolds and Ferrell put numbers together, it's a very entertaining and visual moment for me. There are many of these hilarious moments throughout, and the whole overall experience and feel is “feel-good fun”. Where I think the film fails, however; is in the actual writing; this movie is far too long at 2 hours and 7 minutes. A failure of the editing team me-thinks.. Not enough that it makes me hate this movie per-say, but Spirited doesn't need to be longer than 90 minutes; come on now.

This movie feels like it needlessly dragged on as a means to find a way to extend the story and inject more musical numbers. (probably to sell the album or go on tour; clever haha). Between a few songs, it flipped between sometimes quirky & sometimes meh; uninteresting. It may sound like a big negative but I still enjoyed most of the movie.

Normally I wouldn't say shorter movies are better, sometimes I don’t want them to end even, but with "Spirited", I felt like I needed some "Spirits" to get through parts of it, I think I could have easily saved 30 minutes of my life with better editing.

Overall, Spirited makes me feel like I’m having fun with them also because it cares about the content it recycles from previous genres of this type. It's good that it's an Apple TV+ original, well done for taking a risk, but I'd love to see it in theatres actually because it feels like a theatre show, due to the live energy.

Life Lessons conveyed by the film are mostly the typical cliché in that it compares to the classic story of A Christmas Carol, but it works here too because you do tend to care and feel for these characters. At the end of the day and the movie, I had a big smile on my face and left feeling uplifted, It doesn't break any new ground, but I think people can have a good time with it. It has its dark moments, like Christmas Carol with morals and lessons to get you thinking. It's not necessarily aimed at families with kids, however, but adults, couples and theatrical friends will have a great time!