• Ryan Reynolds’ character, Clint Briggs, is not a good guy.
• As it’s Christmas, we all know what’s coming: a change of heart caused by three ghosts, straight from the mind of Charles Dickens.
• The events of Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol” are a yearly ritual in the universe of Spirited.

Ryan Reynolds’ character, Clint Briggs, is not a good guy. As it’s Christmas, we all know what’s coming: a change of heart caused by three ghosts, straight from the mind of Charles Dickens.

When we first meet Clint in Spirited, he’s starting an internet war in an effort to drum up business, and is soon dubbed the “perfect combination of Mussolini & Seacrest.” On Christmas Eve, however, as a shackled Jacob Marley (Patrick Page) explains to Clint what he’s in for, Marley responds, “And every other adaptation no one asked for,” to Clint’s question about if this is similar to the Dickens tale and the Bill Murray-Bobcat Goldthwait film Scrooged.

The problem with Christmas stories is that they are frequently stale, based on themes and tropes that we’ve heard a million times before, and loaded with cheesiness and sweetness that a different movie probably wouldn’t get away with at any other time of the year. Spirited seeks to add something new to this well-worn story while acknowledging that we have already heard it. While this strategy doesn’t always succeed, when it does, Spirited is a delightful retelling of a well-known tale.

The events of Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol” are a yearly ritual in the universe of Spirited. On Christmas Eve, Marley and his team try to turn around a soul who needs saving. The Ghost of Christmas Present’s (Will Ferrell) most dependable employee, Marley, has been doing this job for so long that he was eligible for retirement 46 seasons ago. Present attempts his hardest task yet in an effort to change this Scrooge when he comes across Clint Briggs and learns that his file lists him as “unredeemable.”

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