Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol” is a timeless holiday story that has managed to stay relevant through several generations. With adaptations in nearly every medium of media, the ghastly tale has proven itself to be a true holiday staple time and time again. However, in nearly every different telling of the story, there aren’t many changes. The same lessons are taught, the same characters are shown, and the same perspectives are held. Despite its success, “A Christmas Carol” has not been given much of a chance to evolve through the years, but “Spirited” takes up that challenge.

Directed by Sean Anders and written by both Anders and John Morris, “Spirited” takes a new approach to the original Dickens story. Starring Will Ferrell and Ryan Reynolds and having support from other big-name actors like Octavia Spencer and Tracy Morgan, the film was certainly sparing no expense on the casting. However, as we all know, a loaded cast isn’t enough to save a film anymore and the interesting decision to make this movie a musical only served to continue to stack the odds against its success. Yet, the clever writing and careful placement of jokes saved this film from a fate of redundancy and cliché.

The plot itself is incredibly unique and takes several strides away from the story that has been retold time and time again. To begin, rather than following an elderly haunted Scrooge, the film follows the Ghost of Christmas Past (Will Ferrell), who goes on a yearly mission to “redeem” the world’s rather unpleasant people, in the same way the spirits once did to old Ebenezer Scrooge. The team of spirits and their operation is also portrayed in a very ironic police-operation-esque style, which makes the film feel very fresh and original. Adding on, rather than a stingy old business owner, the spirits attempt to redeem a divisive corporation owner (Ryan Reynolds), who is determined to make the spirits’ operation run awry. Although it strays from the source material a fair amount, “Spirited” stays true to the morals of the original story, as well as contains some extremely clever references to past films in places you would least expect.

As for the musical numbers, Ferrel and Reynolds are no Broadway singers. Despite this lack of natural vocal talent, however, the film’s post-production team was able to work with what they had, and the musical numbers were not unwelcome in the slightest. They were catchy, very creative and more often than not were actually quite funny. The heavy use of autotune was quite apparent, but considering the lighthearted context of the movie, it is quite easy to look past this and simply enjoy the show.

“Spirited” is not set to be an artistic masterpiece, but that is okay since that isn’t what it’s trying to be. The film is a funny, lighthearted show of Reynolds and Ferrel’s dynamic, a fresh take on a story that has been told the same way for decades, and a fun time for viewers. It may not be a timeless holiday classic, but it certainly is worth a watch this holiday season.