Spirited

Spirited is a musical comedy built around a twist on Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol. Each year on Christmas Eve, the Ghost of Christmas Present chooses one particularly difficult soul to redeem through visits from three spirits. This time he selects Clint Briggs, a man whose resistance to the whole process turns the arrangement on its head, leaving Present to confront his own past, present and future.

Sean Anders directed and co-wrote the screenplay with John Morris, and the film is the seventh he has directed, following Instant Family in 2018. Will Ferrell, who also produced, plays Present, with Ryan Reynolds as Clint and Octavia Spencer as Kimberly. Patrick Page, Sunita Mani and Loren G. Woods appear as Marley, Past and Yet-To-Come, among a credited cast of 96.

Made by Apple Studios with Maximum Effort, Gloria Sanchez Productions and Two Grown Men, the film cost about 75 million dollars and was released in November 2022. Its ratings sit at similar levels across audiences and critics: on IMDb it holds 6.6 from roughly 59,000 votes, on TMDB 6.8 from around 809 votes, while critics gave it 6.4 from 116 reviews. The audience and critical responses therefore land close together.