STARS JOIN FESTIVE FUN

Ryan Reynolds and Will Ferrell sing and dance their way through Christmas, writes Siobhan Duck

ALTHOUGH Ryan Reynolds already had three very good (pint-sized) reasons to shift his slate of projects from romantic comedies and profanitylaced blockbusters to more family-centred films, he now has another one on the way. A doting dad to daughters James, 7, Inez, 6, and Betty, 3, the Deadpool actor will soon welcome a fourth child with wife Blake Lively.

That’s why, Reynolds says, his first Christmas movie, Spirited, couldn’t have come at a better time for him and his children. “I would say that half the films I have made are obscene,” he laughs. “So this is great to have an opportunity to be able to sit down and show them what I do when I go to work each day.”

Not that his girls aren’t aware of their parents’ professions. “They used to come to set with me a lot more,” the 46-year-old recalls. “But Covid protocols have prevented that. It’s not as much of a shared experience as it used to be. So, the fact they’ll get to watch this one means a lot to me.”

Co-starring with Reynolds in Spirited is funny man Will Ferrell, a veteran of the holiday genre, who says his own children – sons Magnus, 18, Mattias, 15, and Axel, 11 – are “a bit more discerning and less bothered” about watching his output. “But I will force them to sit down and watch all my movies on New Year’s Day,” he says. “That’s what we do every New Year’s Day.”

All jokes aside, watching Ferrell in Yuletide fare has become a festive tradition for many families. Like the 1946 tearjerker It’s A Wonderful Life and 2003’s perennial favourite Love Actually, Ferrell’s own 2003 film Elf – about an oversized Santa’s helper who goes to New York in search of his biological father – has become a Christmas classic.

“I never would have predicted that we’d be talking about Elf right now, 20-something years later, when I was running around, you know, in yellow tights,” Ferrell, 55, says. Yet, the comedian concedes, the film’s enduring popularity has set a benchmark for holiday films since, including Spirited. “I do feel like we’ve put a solid step forward in creating something that’s unique and will be something that families will want to sit down and watch,” he says of the film. “It’s definitely a feel-good movie.”

Spirited is also a modern – and musical – retelling of

A Christmas Carol, which, amid the sparkly song-and-dance routines, provides a sobering commentary about the dark consequences of social media.

The classic 1843 Charles Dickens novella about a miserly man who – after being visited by three ghosts – learns the true meaning of Christmas, has been adapted many times before.

Spirited now turns the familiar premise on its ear by having the ghostly visitor Present (Ferrell) confront all the stages of his own life after he spends time with the Scrooge-like Clint Briggs (Reynolds).

“I think that it’s really raising a lot of questions about how we treat each other today and can we find it within ourselves to turn it around?” Ferrell says of the themes explored in the movie.

SPIRITED

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