Spirited - Greg and Zanna’s verdict on the new Will Ferrell movie

Ryan Reynolds, left, and Will Ferrell in Spirited.

SCORES

Number of actors funnier than Will Ferrell: 0

Bad gags delivered by Will Ferrell: 0

21st century Christmas classics not starring Will Ferrell: 0

SHE SAW

Greg barely laughed during this two-hour musical comedy, so I was completely blindsided when afterwards he said it was “the best Christmas movie ever made”. Throughout the ludicrous spectacular, I kept expecting him to say, “Can we turn this off?” But the power of musicals is mysterious and polarising and, despite his muted laughter, it was working on his insides.

Spirited, starring comedians Will Ferrell and Ryan Reynolds, is a bonafide musical, that is self-reflexive and pokes fun at the conventions of the genre, while conforming to them absolutely.

I’m an unashamed musical-lover. I’m willing to suspend disbelief indefinitely to be swept up in a grand song-and-dance number that makes no logical sense in the real world. This film doesn’t let you do that entirely because it frequently acknowledges the absurdity of breaking into song and dance and I still have mixed feelings about that creative decision, which seems designed to make the genre more palatable to a sceptical audience.

There are huge musical numbers that are comically ridiculous - like the rousing ballad Unredeemable, which has hundreds of dancers doing an impassioned performance with torches or, my personal favourite, the Oliver-style Good Afternoon. But I still admired them for the effective musical extravaganzas they were, which makes the line between loving parody and total evisceration of the musical world almost imperceptible and a bit uncomfortable for musical buffs like me.

The story, a reimagining of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol in which Ferrell plays the Ghost of Christmas Present on a mission to change Reynolds’ “unredeemable” Clint Briggs into a good person, is cleverly written and comes to a mostly satisfying conclusion. Both Ferrell and Reynolds share a gift for warmhearted comedy. They’re lovable, Dad-joke kind of guys and it’s hard not to succumb to their charms. Arguably though, Sunita Mani is the standout comedically as The Ghost of Christmas Past who can’t contain her lust for the “perp”, Clint.

The songs, the choreography and the costumes are great and for the most part they work even though Ferrell, Reynolds and co-star Octavia Spencer are clearly not singers. They’re singing in tune but I don’t think any of them would argue that they’re good at singing.

Like the musical genre itself, this film is polarising. Its position as either comic genius or disaster is so precarious that whether you watch it tired or hungry or on Sunday instead of Saturday could be the deciding factor as to whether you love or hate it. I enjoyed it but I think Ferrell’s other Christmas hit, Elf, is better and I’m not convinced this will be topping anyone’s “Best Christmas Films of All Time” list except for Greg’s.

HE SAW

The first really great Christmas movie of this century was 2003′s Elf, starring Will Ferrell. That was followed by a vast period of Christmas filmic darkness, which has just been broken by Spirited. It’s no coincidence that both these movies star Will Ferrell because he is not just a comedic genius but is the sort of comedic genius who perfectly negotiates the thin line between schmaltz and cynicism in a way that is necessary for helping audiences negotiate the thick syrup of the Christmas movie.

Ferrell knows how to make things funny even when they’re not. It’s hard to remember a film in which he’s not funny. He has bent every script he’s ever been in the presence of – even the bad ones – to his will to humour. The reasons for this are complex, involving, for instance: posture, facial expression, intonation, the exploitation of space (physical and verbal) and the communication of emotion in combinations that are too complex for computers, let alone the human mind. Will Ferrell is an impossibly high-powered processing device for humour – not because he understands it but because he is it. He is the greatest living comedic actor, slightly ahead of the sexy master of charmedy, Paul Rudd.

Because the movie is a musical and Zanna is a musical nerd, she tried to engage me afterwards in a discussion about the nature and meaning of the song-and-dance numbers – something about whether they were parody or not. I listened, as required, but didn’t really care. I found the musical numbers interesting enough but they weren’t the reason I was there.

We were roughly halfway through when I became aware of the unusually high level of pleasure I was feeling and, when I reflected on that pleasure, I became aware that the bulk of the reason for it was Ferrell. At one point in the movie, something unexpected happened, to which he responded, “That never gets old,” which was a lazy piece of scriptwriting, a cliche, and I knew it was a cliche, so why was I laughing? I was laughing because I felt good and I felt good because I was watching a classic and I was watching a classic because of Ferrell.

Spirited is streaming now on Apple TV+