Like many of my generation, I fondly remember watching Ghostbusters as a kid. I was 6 in 1984, and didn't see Ghostbusters until it came out on VHS and it was shown at a friend's birthday party a year later. A lot of the subtlety in the script would have passed me by at the time, but I still remember seeing the ghosts on screen, the very real threat they presented and laughing at the funny bits. It was a formative experience of my youth, and I was watching again when the cartoon came out, entranced by the theme tune and the surprisingly excellent writing the show enjoyed, which included scripts from one of my all time favourites, J Michael Straczynski.
I was delighted with the Ghostbusters video game - the main cast all reprising their roles, an excellent story, and your chance to become a Ghostbuster as a nameless scrub that Venkman would delight in using as a guinea pig for all the new tech. It felt like a legitimate follow up to a franchise that many recall fondly.
The Elephant in the Room
Skip to 2016, and Paul Feig's Ghostbusters reboot. Loud, brash, obnoxious and woefully mishandled, it was an utter pig of a film. It didn't understand the franchise it was purporting to represent, coming off as yet another of Feig's loud, brash and obnoxious "spins" on genre, much like Spy had been for the spy genre. Unfortunately it was picked up as a "cause" by left-leaning types to support their narrative on racism, sexism and anti-Trump rhetoric, the burdens of which a bad comedy simply couldn't hope to shoulder. Even Feig in interviews said he "had a take" but wasn't "sure it was the right one".
Now there's a pitch to bet $144 million dollars on.
The result was a charmless, gurning mess that used more improv than script to scream it's unfunny, outdated lines at you like an incessant 4-year-old with Tourette Syndrome, all surrounded by Scooby Doo level effects and a plastic world that bore no semblance of reality to our own. No stakes, no horror, just awful people in an awful world.
Sadly, the same voices that championed that mess are hoping the latest Sony effort from Jason Reitman, which was produced for roughly half the budget ($75 million) of 2016's effort will fail. Because otherwise right-wing bigoted sexists will feel emboldened.
Yes, of course the sexists will feel emboldened by a female-led Ghostbusters film, starring a 12 year old protagonist. Nostalgia, on which the film leans heavily, is bad. Because Ghostbusters 2016 didn't use the logo, proton packs, ghost traps or a red and white vehicle. Oh wait...
The mental gymnastics of these people never ceases to amaze me. Still, like they preached to those of us who didn't like Feig's film, you can always go buy your preferred version and watch that instead. I'm sure in their case it'll only cost a few dollars from the nearest clearance bin. Oh Karma, I do love you sometimes.
Back to Afterlife
At it's core, Ghostbusters is a film of two halves. The first being a family drama, for which director Jason Reitman is well known (most notably for Juno). It takes a dysfunctional family living on the edge of bankruptcy and displaces them to a small town to take over an old farm left to them by the father of matriarch Carrie (Callie Coon), who just happens to be the daughter of Egon Spengler. The first half of the film shows 12 year old Phoebe (an unrecognisable McKenna Grace) being haunted by a seemingly friendly presence, finding old (yet of course familiar) objects around the house that lead her to discover more about the Grandfather her mother never mentions.
Once the ghosts come out to play, the tone shifts to one of Spielberg-style youthful fun, as Phoebe, along with her brother Trevor (Finn Wolfhard) and his work crush Lucky (Celeste O'Conner) discover the town's destructive secret and the real reason a retired Ghostbuster moved to the middle of nowhere.
The sound-design is superb - those proton-packs sound incredible in IMAX!
Overall, I left the film very satisfied. The heartfelt narrative was clearly a love-letter to Harold Ramis, who was a close friend of the Reitman's, and his send off was far more genuine than the lingering shot of the bust in Feig's film. Seeing the gang come back together at the end was an emotional (if not entirely narratively sensible) highlight, which you might argue was cynical, but we've waited 38 years for it, so for one last hurrah, I'm glad the fans got to see it. It may not feel entirely earned by the film, but it did feel right.
Wider Reception
It felt odd to see both Mark Kermode and the guys at Red Letter Media tear the film apart, calling it cynical, lazy and cheap. Normally I can understand the critique from both parties even if I don't always agree, but to hear Mark in particular state that "at least the 2016 film did something new" was baffling, given how it was an almost shot-for-shot narrative re-tread of the original without the wit or charm. However, in this instance it seems the fans are rebelling once again by raving about the film (to the point that Kermode had to make a follow-up to deal with the deluge of mail from satisfied cinema-goers). While I wasn't "ugly crying" at the end of the film, I did shed a tear. Being a hard-working father who works abroad in non-Covid times, perhaps I'm just more sensitive to the absent father picture presented here, and I strive to make sure my daughter sees as much of me as possible. This film just emphasised for me why that's so important.
Bringing back Ivo Shandor was, I felt, a good move despite some moaning about it just recreating the end of the first film. It gave that story a continuation, and it's not like the character hasn't been mentioned in other Ghostbusters media. Yes, a new villain would be "fresh", but I felt it worked in the context of the final battle and set up some great one-liners for Bill Murray. It also provides a context for the threat-level without having to waste time on exposition as to why we should be frightened of the antagonist; we already know how powerful Gozer is, and from the children's perspective, not knowing also works. I doubt Phoebe would be telling jokes to Gozer by way of distraction if she fully understood how evil the creature is, though I did enjoy learning more about Gozer's backstory and the cult around it. Either way, it worked for me on a narrative level and I really don't see a problem with some of the film harking back to 1984 so long as the core remains different enough to be its own thing.
My own criticisms
But I can't say there aren't narrative issues. Carrie never mentions her mother, and it doesn't appear to be Janine Melnitz (wonderfully played as always by Annie Potts). It's almost inconceivable that Ray wouldn't believe Egon given his character and their history together. Why Egon couldn't pick up a phone to his daughter is also a knock against his character, there would have to be some element that prevented it; perhaps the unnamed mother didn't want crazy old Egon near her daughter, or by reaching out he might put his family at risk, but without that context it just makes Egon look uncaring, and that's not the character we know and love. I'm hoping a Director's cut might give us some more backstory.
There are times when the film makes genuine missteps too - how would Trevor know that his mother was inside the now stone Zool? The audience is obviously aware, but he'd have no reason to believe his mother wasn't lost inside a solid stone statue. It's missing that moment of horror, but the film skips it because it can't surprise the audience, so why bother? But for those parents who might be taking their kids to see this film, it would have allowed the parents a bit of knowledge and a chance to see the relief/surprise on the faces of their kids. A missed opportunity.
And how is Stay Puft still using that mascot? Or even still in business? Bizarre. But even though I know it's a cynical attempt to shift merchandise, I enjoyed their antics, and both Tom and Bryony who accompanied me to the film were giggling at them.
Ghostbusters: Legacy
Overall it's a good film, if not a great one. It allows the original team to close the door on the franchise (though I suspect Ernie Hudson will play a major role in a Ghostbusters 4) and it has enough heart and genuine affection for the series to satisfy fans. If you can't look back fondly, why bother at all? It's clear from this film that Ghostbusters can now move on from this mortal plane in any direction it chooses. A case of not only Egon setting things right, but the Reitman's too.
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