ILLUSTRATIONS MARK WARD
CHRISTMAS, AS ALAN Rickman so memorably said in Die Hard, that most incontrovertibly Christmassy of movies, is the time of miracles. Well, notch up another one to ol’ Saint Nick, who, this holiday season, has taken the liberty of enabling two of the funniest actors on the planet — Ryan Reynolds and Will Ferrell — to star together in their very own festive movie.
Spirited is the latest adaptation of A Christmas Carol, but before you can say, “What the Dickens? Another one?”, this one is different. First of all, it digs deep into the logic barely holding Charles Dickens’ timeless tale up, and shows us just how the Ghosts Of Christmas Past, Present (here played by Ferrell) and Yet To Come pick their soulless, Scrooge-like targets (public enemy number one played by Reynolds), and why. Secondly, amidst the comedy and the Christmas cheer, it throws in a number of surprising twists and asks fairly big questions for a Hollywood studio comedy about the nature of the soul, and whether it’s possible for someone to be truly beyond redemption. Thirdly, and this is quite important, it’s a musical. A full-blown, all-singing, all-dancing musical.
So, Empire jumped at the chance to get Ferrell, who not only has a Yuletide classic already under his belt with Elf, but has frequently displayed a decent set of pipes (“It’s the fuckin’ Catalina Wine Mixer!”), back together with Reynolds, who, apart from a brief and bizarre stint on the South Korean version of The Masked Singer, has not. Settle down, then, with a Santa hat and a mulled wine, for a chat about movies and music and singing and dancing and making Will Ferrell laugh. Which, as it turns out, is perhaps the biggest Christmas miracle of them all...
Does it feel strange shooting a Christmas movie in the summer?
Ferrell: No. I mean, you’re out there in Dickensian outfits, dancing on cobblestones in 100-degree weather in downtown Boston. And you’re not thinking about Christmas
Reynolds: You’re thinking, “Am I gonna die? Am I gonna pass away on camera? And it’ll be so sad too, because Tom Cruise can handcuff himself to a biplane at 10,000 feet while talking to an audience, and I’m just gonna go because I got too hot in my Christmas stuffy.” Ferrell: And you’ve sweated through every garment. People are like, “Do you want to take your jacket off?” “Nope!” Reynolds: You know why I don’t want to take my jacket off? Because I’m completely nude under this jacket, that’s why.