Is it possible to be totally irredeemable?

That’s the question that Spirited, a new holiday movie now in theaters and streaming on Apple TV+, tries to answer. Spirited, starring Will Ferrell and Ryan Reynolds, is yet another retelling of Charles Dickens’ classic A Christmas Carol, but with a twist. The film is directed and co-written by Sean Anders.

No, there are no Muppets in this version, and though it is a musical, that’s been done before, and by The Muppets, no less. This update has the ghosts that haunted Ebenezer Scrooge in Carol doing the same thing every year to a different miserly soul.

Here there is an entire spiritual industry built around redeeming one hard case every year, with a crew of thousands of researchers and special effects artists led by Jacob Marley (Patrick Page) crafting the past, present and future scenarios that will make the cads see the error of their ways and become a force for good.

The team thinks they have a perfect choice in a Vancouver hotel manager who is rude to his staff, but the Ghost of Christmas Present (Will Ferrell) sees a bigger challenge: social media manager/manipulator Clint Briggs (Ryan Reynolds), who seems to have lost his soul in his pursuit of clout and cash. Present wants to take on the challenge of redeeming Clint, but Marley doesn’t want to waste resources on him – according to their research Clint is “unredeemable.”

Present wins out, though, and the team spends the next year writing the script for their visitation, believing that they will win this one. But when it comes time to execute, nothing goes to plan. Clint has a fling with the Ghost of Christmas Past (Sunita Mani) and Present has to take over the job.

Clint is used to being the manipulator, not the manipulated, and thus doesn’t fall for any of the Ghosts sentimental traps. But the mission really seems doomed to failure when Clint turns the tables on Present, delving into his backstory, to try to convince Present to not only give up on Clint’s redemption, but to give up the ghost gig and go back to being a human.

Present is tempted, because he’s become smitten with Clint’s assistant Kimberly (Octavia Spencer), who is the only other person in the ‘real world’ who can see him. Though most of the movie’s original musical numbers are good but not great, songwriters Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (La La Land) give us the best song in the show here in “Good Afternoon.”

The whole ghost visitation scheme runs off the rails here, and the movie becomes more about rearranging the lives of its two leads, and to a lesser degree, the people in their lives. Clint has a teenage niece, Wren (Marlow Barkley), the daughter of his late sister Carrie (Andrea Anders), who comes to him for advice about winning a student body presidential election. Clint tasks Kimberly with getting some dirt on the kid she’s running against, which pushes her to question the choices she has made in working for Clint. Also, she’s really into Present.

Eventually, it all works out, which will surprise no one. The real joy comes in watching the bromance between Clint and Present develop. (There’s plenty of time for this, given the movie’s run time of more than two hours.) It’s best not to think too hard about the rules for who can see whom, and why the Ghost of Christmas Present is able to dash back and forth across all the timelines. The Ghost of Christmas Yet-to-Come (voiced by Tracy Morgan) has a very small role, though it is pretty pivotal to the story.

It’s best just to concentrate on the fun dance numbers (Reynolds in particular is a great hoofer) and to get swept up in the spirit, just like the leads, who look like they’re having a wonderful time.