Spirited (2022)
Directed by Sean Anders
No — Spirited is not especially woke, scoring 22 out of 100 on our wokeness meter.
Spirited arrives as the four hundredth or so lap around the Dickens track, a Christmas musical comedy with Apple money behind it and two movie stars visibly enjoying themselves.
Consciousness Markers
The film features a notably diverse ensemble for a Dickens adaptation, with Octavia Spencer as the female lead and romantic interest and Sunita Mani as a South Asian Ghost of Christmas Past romantically paired with a lead. The casting is colorblind and natural rather than foregrounded as a statement.
Kimberly is a somewhat independent woman with a conscience who ultimately quits her morally compromised job, and the Ghost of Christmas Past is a woman wielding institutional power. There is agency but no explicit feminist argument.
Clint Briggs is a callous corporate media consultant who spreads disinformation and orchestrates smear campaigns, giving the film a mild satirical streak about greedy executives and manipulation-for-profit, though it never builds into a systemic critique.
The musical numbers and redemption arc deliver a mild 'do a little good' moral, but the film is a genial holiday comedy rather than a preachy lecture on modern social issues.
The cast is racially diverse, but the story contains no commentary on race, systemic racism, or racial identity whatsoever.
Every romantic pairing in the film is heterosexual, with no LGBTQ+ characters, subtext, or themes present.
No climate or environmental themes appear anywhere in the film.
No body-positive themes, body-diverse casting commentary, or messaging around physical appearance.
No neurodivergent characters or themes of any kind.
A modern retelling of a Dickens novella is a literary reimagining, not a revisionist account of real historical events.
Why it received this score
Spirited arrives as the four hundredth or so lap around the Dickens track, a Christmas musical comedy with Apple money behind it and two movie stars visibly enjoying themselves. Will Ferrell plays the Ghost of Christmas Present, a weary bureaucrat of the afterlife who has been redeeming one dark soul per holiday for two centuries and has grown attached to the desk. Ryan Reynolds plays Clint Briggs, a media consultant whose business is the manufacture of grievance and the smearing of opponents. The premise is sound enough. The songs are competent. The runtime is not.
The ensemble is noticeably more varied than the source material has traditionally been afforded. Octavia Spencer takes the female lead as Kimberly, a conscience-stricken executive who eventually walks away from the job, and Sunita Mani plays the Ghost of Christmas Past as a woman with institutional authority who winds up romantically entangled with a colleague. The film presents these arrangements without comment, which is the correct instinct. This is casting as furniture, not as thesis. Kimberly's arc gestures at female agency and moral independence, though the film never argues the point aloud. On matters of race, the film says nothing at all, and seems content to let the faces in the frame do the talking.
There is a mild satirical barb aimed at consultants who sell disinformation to the highest bidder, and it lands softly, since the movie cares far more about redemption than about the machinery that makes Clint rich. The moral, repeated in song and dialogue, is that we should all do a little good. It is a greeting card sentiment, delivered with a straight face and a full orchestra. The result is genial, overstuffed, and essentially harmless, a holiday confection that wants to be liked and mostly is.
Analysis generated by our Consciousness Algorithm
Synopsis
Each Christmas Eve, the Ghost of Christmas Present selects one dark soul to be reformed by a visit from three spirits. But this season, he picked the wrong Scrooge. Clint Briggs turns the tables on his ghostly host until Present finds himself reexamining his own past, present and future.
Questions about Spirited
Is Spirited woke?
No — Spirited is not especially woke, scoring 22 out of 100 on our wokeness meter. That earns it a verdict of Based.
Does Spirited have any woke elements?
1 of the 10 markers register at 30 or above, led by Representation Casting (58). On Representation Casting: The film features a notably diverse ensemble for a Dickens adaptation, with Octavia Spencer as the female lead and romantic interest and Sunita Mani as a South Asian Ghost of Christmas Past romantically paired with a lead.
How does Spirited compare to other 2022 movies?
It ranks #75 of the 223 films from 2022 we've scored; their average is 22. The wokest is Bros (92).
How is the Woke Score calculated?
An AI-assisted process researches the film and its reception, scores it 0–100 on ten markers, then combines those into one 0–100 Woke Score. It measures a specific set of 2020s cultural themes, not film quality.