Who ya gonna call, 3.5 readers?
BQB for a review, that’s who.
First, let me hand it to this franchise. At a time when brick and mortar movie theaters are dying on the vine, these flicks put butts in seats. My local cinema, usually sparse on any other night, was packed to the rafters tonight, with nerds of all ages dressed in Ghostbusting outfits, ready to enjoy the show. That’s not bad for a 40 year old movie series.
I went into this expecting great disappointment, but I was pleasantly surprised. IMO, it’s very good and I advise all 3.5 of you that it is worth your time.
Why did I think it would be poopy? A) The last two installments weren’t so hot – i.e. Lady Ghostbusters of 2016 and Ghostbusters: Afterlife of 2021. Actually, I thought 75 percent of Afterlife was a decent movie with the late Egon Spengler’s grandkids, daughter and her BF coming together with friends to solve the mystery of Egon’s last ghost hunting case only to SPOILER ALERT just copy the ending of the original film in the last 25 percent of the movie. Lame.
B) The reviews of this installment were awful. All the critics warned their readers that they’d basically seen piles of poop with more charisma. I was surprised the reviews were that bad – I mean, surely it had some redeeming qualities, right? But no. The critics hate this movie.
So, for some reason, boredom, or just loyalty to a franchise I have loved since my youth, I went to see a movie I was sure would suck but to my surprise, it was really, really good, so those critics can go lick Slimer’s greasy green taint for all I care. Was that too much? Sorry. That felt like too much.
The plot? The Spengler family from the last film has moved to NYC to take over ghostbusting operations out of the famous firehouse their patriarch Egon and his BFFS once operated out of. The fam includes Mom/Callie (Carrie Coon), step-dad Gary (Paul Rudd), daughter Phoebe (McKenna Grace) and son, Trevor (Finn Wolfhard).
Ex-EPA dickless pencilneck from the original film Walter Peck (William Atherton) is now, horror of horrors, the Mayor of NYC and continues his anti-Ghostbusters hard-on, using his office to make the lives of our favorite proton pack wielders harder than ever.
Meanwhile, all the superfluous kid friends of the Spengler fam have come to NYC in various capacities, either working for Winston Zeddemore (Ernie Hudson) in his well-funded, super-high tech ghostbusting operation, or with Ray Stantz (Dan Akyroyd) on his YouTube show about paranormal activity.
Double meanwhile, the ecto-containment unit aka ghost prison where the ghostbusters have been depositing ghosts for 40 years is full to capacity and Winston needs to put his top nerds on the case before the ghosts make a break for it.
Triple meanwhile, creepy weirdo Nadeem (Kumail Nanjiani) sells an old relic he finds in his dead granny’s belongings to Ray’s occult shop, thus starting a chain of events that leads to an ancient demon with the power to scare humans so bad that they literally freeze to death, being busted loose.
It’s up to the Spenglers to save the day, with assistance of some old familiar faces. Akroyd and Hudson get a great deal of screentime and fans will be happy to know that their roles are pretty integral to the plot. Bill Murray is briefly in it in the middle, and then briefly in it at the end. Critics say he phoned his lines in but honestly, I don’t think those critics understand his deadpan sarcasm as his perfectly time one-liners brought down the house with the audience I watched it with. Annie Potts reprises her role as Jeanine Melnitz, the Ghostbusters’ secretary, but she gets to suit up this time.
You know, my complaint about Ghostbuster sequels has always been that the success of the original had very little to do with ghosts. The original was less about things that go bump in the night and more about four guys who saw a need that desperately needed to be met, developed new technology to meet that need and against all odds, started a business to provide a valuable public service. Along the way, they deal with naysayers, bureaucratic red tape, and the fact that the science they are dealing with is very theoretical and could blow themselves the eff up at any time. This all led to good comedy as well as to the audience rooting for the underdog.
Ghostbusters 2 managed to capture some of that underdog vibe but the last two modern sequels didn’t really capture it. They tried to focus more on the ghosts and on villains working with the ghosts but the problem is, and sure this sounds silly for a film called “Ghostbusters” but the original’s popularity just had very little to do with ghosts.
But here they managed to get some things right. They created a villain that was very scary and made stakes that were quite high. They captured some of that underdog charisma by having Peck breathe down the heroes’ necks again. They brought back the old guard ghostbusters and treated them with respect. Sure, we would have loved to have seen more of Murray but all three out of still living Ghostbusters plus their office worker got their turn to shine.
STATUS: Shelf-worthy. If they can make more like this, the franchise might have a future yet.
Bookshelf Battle 