Christmas Carols
SPIRITED director Sean Anders on the songs of his Charles Dickens musical comedy
Ryan Reynolds as Christmas Scrooge — albeit a sparkly, musically one — Clint Briggs.
Director Sean Anders, ready to sing, “Action!”
IT TAKES A brave director to tackle another big-screen adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. And a braver director to wrestle with the ghost of The Muppet Christmas Carol by making it a musical. Yet that’s what Sean Anders did with Spirited, the Will Ferrell-Ryan Reynolds comedy which boasts a slew of original tracks from Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, the duo behind Dear Evan Hansen and The Greatest Showman’s tunes. Here, Anders talks us through the standout songs and sequences. That’s musical numberwang!
THAT CHRISTMAS MORNING FEELIN’
From the off, there’s no beating around the Christmas tree: Spirited is an all-singin’, all-dancin’ musical, with Ferrell’s Present (as in, the Ghost Of Christmas...) leading an upbeat number about that feeling only a Yuletide dawn can bring. “I didn’t want to pull any punches with the numbers,” says Anders. “I wanted to make it really fun, really over-the-top and a little bit crazy, and this was the Ghosts celebrating what they do.” Quite a few numbers didn’t make the final cut, including a portion of this song. “We had a grand finale that was over-the-top in such a wonderful way. But pacing-wise, we needed to get on with it.”