‘Ghostbusters’ Is Horror Comedy Gold (Spoiler-Filled Review)
No film, in recent memory, has dealt with as much shit as ‘Ghostbusters‘.
The Internet film community attacked this film with fury. Even one of the ‘Ghostbusters‘ trailers became the most disliked Youtube video of all time. Many thought the film would be dead on arrival. In a surprising twist, critics began to give ‘Ghostbusters‘ positive feedback. The words surrounding were kind ones with a more mature review standpoint. All of this drama made for one of my most anticipated viewings of the year and I thankfully was not let down.
Our new story begins with Erin Gilbert (Kristen Wiig) working towards her tenure at Columbia University. That is until a book bout paranormal research co-written by her surfaces. She finds out Abby Yates (Melissa McCarthy) released it without her permission. Confronting Abby doesn’t work for Erin as she is lured into world of the supernatural and begins hunting ghosts again. Joined by Abby’s new friend Jillian Holtzmann (Kate McKinnon), they encounter some serious apparitions. The girls meet subway worker Patty Tolan (Leslie Jones) who joins them as the street-smarts of the team. Together, they attempt to save New York from an influx of ghosts.
Breaking Down The Film:
Simply told and properly motivated, the story was refreshing. Some parts were obviously edited out leaving more to be desired but those gaps allowed for cliched tropes to disappear. Never did unnecessary fights occur among the girls forcing the story to pause and the origin story was handled swiftly. As quick as the origin was, ‘Ghostbusters‘ did skimp out on fully developing the villain. We only briefly see Rowan North (Neil Casey) before he goes full villain, quickly switching to Kevin Beckman’s (Chris Hemsworth) body. Following that, there’s a giant ghost in the third act. You never get invested in one character before moving onto the next.
Like the original, the best part of the film is the dynamic with the team. Each Ghostbuster brings something interesting to the plate; specifically the show-stealer Kate McKinnon. Her character is this obvious lesbian bad-ass who borderlines on genius & insane. She cooks up all the gadgets and provides the most laughs. This role will place her at the top of a lot of casting director’s list. Leslie Jones also shines bright; she yells her way through some hilarious scenes.
Nostalgia was obviously going to be play a big part in the film. ‘Ghostbusters‘ has a passionate cult following and my particular screening would have audience members cheering for each wink to the original. My favorite was seeing Annie Potts return as a hotel desk clerk who can’t be bothered, similar to her receptionist character in the 1984 film. Also loved the return of Slimer. It felt like the least forced with all the ghost mayhem. But did we need a female Slimer? ‘Gremlins 2‘ anyone?
Final Thoughts:
Director Paul Feig and the cast pulled it off. Tacking the gender politics and online controversy head-on, ‘Ghostbusters‘ was very self-aware. Thankfully they never got too in themselves and hit parody status but they didn’t hold back. They also didn’t allow cameos and easter-eggs to dictate every joke. If you are set on hating the film, it won’t change your mind but going into it with an open mind will allow you to see is what I think will be one of the best movies this year.
Harrison Ford turns 74 today. 74! And it doesn’t seem he’s slowing down any time soon, with new Indiana Jones and Blade Runner sequels right around the corner. Ford is the most iconic American movie star of all time, mostly because of Han Solo and Indy. But in between those unforgettable franchise roles, Ford managed to showcase some incredible acting chops in a variety of different films.
Here are his five best roles, excluding Indy and Han.
5. Dr. Richard Walker (Frantic) – Roman Polanski’s small 1988 thriller showcases Harrison Ford’s ability to play desperate and strong, all with extreme facial features. His Dr. Walker must traverse the Parisian underworld to try and find his kidnapped wife. Battling jet lag, a language barrier, and untrustworthy scoundrels at every turn, Ford’s performance hits all the right emotional notes at the proper times.
4. Jack Ryan (Patriot Games) – After taking over the role from Alec Baldwin following The Hunt for Red October, Harrison Ford perfectly embodied Tom Clancy’s middle-aged former CIA operative, more so in Patriot Games than in the bloated follow up, Clear and Present Danger. He carries a dogged determination, and sells heroism when he decides on a whim to stop the IRA’s assassination attempt early on.
3. Rozat “Rusty” Sabich (Presumed Innocent) – The late 80s and early 90s, as evidenced by this list, was an interesting and diverse time for Harrison Ford. In 1990, he tackled Scott Turow’s wildly successful, bestselling novel about a lawyer accused of murdering a woman with whom he had an affair. The role required some tightrope walking from Ford, having to convince us he had not committed murder while admitting some less-than-admirable shortcomings as a husband. With a short-cropped hairdo, Ford manages to disappear into Rusty Sabich more than any other time in his career.
2. John Book (Witness) – Ford’s one and only Oscar nomination (!) came in 1985, when he played John Book, a Philadelphia detective who goes into hiding in Amish country to protect a young Amish boy who witnessed a murder. This is one of Ford’s most layered performances, thanks to the slow-burning romance between his Book and Kelly McGillis as the boy’s mother, Rachel. Their attraction has thousands of years of religious traditions keeping them apart, and Ford (and McGillis) sells the relationship.
1. Dr. Richard Kimble (The Fugitive) – Somehow, some way, Harrison Ford didn’t grab a nomination for his role as Richard Kimble, the doctor accused of murdering his wife. Tommy Lee Jones would shock the world with a supporting Actor win, but Ford is equally as important and just as incredible in his role. Director Andrew Davis turned a minor television series into a towering cinematic thriller, and it’s Ford’s magnetic turn as Kimble that centers the entire thing.
No, you didn’t read that wrong. Mr. “Lives in a pineapple under the sea” is getting his very own Broadway musical. The Spongebob Musical premiered in Chicago last month, and will transfer to the Great White Way hopefully in the next year.
“A Spongebob Musical?” You may mumble, as you roll your eyes. Trust me–that was my first reaction, too. Broadway fans know that stranger and stranger properties have found their way to the stage in the past few years–but adaptation is nothing new. Classics like Oklahoma, Phantom, Pippin, 1776, Les Miserables, Ragtime… all came from books or historical events. Godspell, Jesus Christ Superstar, and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat pulled directly from biblical tales. So when Shrek, Bring it On, Legally Blonde, and yes, even Hamilton hit the stage, no one should have been surprised.
In fact, The Spongebob Musical has more in common with the shows above than original works like Next to Normal, The Last Five Years, or A New Brain. Why, then, is the knee-jerk reaction that Broadway is finally dead?
Here’s why The Spongebob Musical should get you excited rather than running for the hills:
An All-Star List of Composers
Note that this list includes both Cydi Lauper and Sara Bareilles, who already have one successful Broadway show a piece. Brendon Urie (Panic! At the Disco) is particularly excited about his contribution which went directly to the big sponge himself.
The Set and Costumes Look Perfect
Instead of going for a direct translation from television, the set uses found items to build scenery out of junk you’d find at the bottom of the sea. Add the fact that there are some pretty neat tricks up the sleeves of the creative team, and Spongebob will be fascinating live.
The Lead Cast is Talented “New-Comers”
New Broadway shows and even revivals regularly rely on a big name from T.V. or film to draw audiences. The production often suffers as a result; fans are let down by a lack of talent in a live setting, and general interest drops once the star leaves the cast. Spongebobisn’t even trying that route, with Spongebob (Ethan Slater), Sandy (Lilli Cooper), and Patrick (Danny Skinner) all ranging from fresh-out-of-undergrad to fresh off the understudy bench at Wicked.
So what do you think? Are ya ready, kids? We sure are.
Another day, another piece of Spider-Man: Homecoming footage hits Twitter. In this new video, we see Tom Holland‘s Spider-Man seemingly stop a bike thief.
In an industrial area in West Sacramento, California, just off one of the busiest ports in the state, sits the region’s Beer-muda triangle. Three unique microbreweries within a few blocks of each other offering some 32 taps featuring beers ranging from traditional IPAs to stouts to English Pub Ales. And sitting right in the middle is Yolo Brewing Company.
Yolo Brewing Company– West Sacramento, CA
The “yolo” in the name refers to Yolo County where the brewery is located and not necessarily that clever “you only live once” way of life. “First and foremost, it’s a geographic anchor,” laughs Yolo Brew founder and general manager Michael Costello.
Make no mistake– Costello doesn’t try to distance himself from the other “yolo”, he embraces it. He believes craft beer caters to those living in the moment, fellow outdoors enthusiasts who would rather spend a day on the river or riding down a mountain than on the couch.
“Why do those people do what they do? They are not waiting for the next time around to go out and live life well. So in that regard you drink craft beer for the same reasons… you only live once.”
Ironically, Costello has proven that in the beer industry “you only live once” doesn’t necessarily apply—at least to him. He’s now on his third life in the brewery biz.
Beer life number one started a couple of years after graduating from the University of California Davis’s fermentation science program in 1992.
“Took a few years off, drove trucks, just didn’t do anything intellectual for a couple of years. It clicked with me in ‘95 that I’ve got this knowledge, I’ve got this interest, it’s time to apply it and that’s when I came across the concept or the business model of a brew on premise; a place where people would make their own beer.”
It was around that time that he founded Brew It Up in Davis where you could get professional help to brew your own beer. It eliminated the complexities of home-brewing and the risks of making undrinkable swill. The business model proved to be more popular than even Costello expected.
The kettles used to brew Yolo’s beer and where you can brew your own
“I went into thinking; it is one kettle, one batch, one person. Hey we have six kettles, we’re going to have six people here, but no it was six people per batch. So it was often just a big party.”
Such a party, that within seven years Costello moved Brew It Up from small-college town Davis east to big-city Sacramento. He also expanded the business. It was still a self-brewery but now it was also a full restaurant and bar.
“We jumped big,” he says and so began Costello’s second beer life. It lasted eight years.
Costello says a combination of poor location, economic downturn and mounting debt forced the brew-pub to close. He may have considered giving up at that point, but some willing investors convinced him he had another beer life to live.
“When Brew It Up failed I had a lot of people approach me quickly and say I want to be involved the next time around and I’m like, ‘do you see what’s going on here, this isn’t success.’ And I think their point was… this is a failed business for a lot of reasons, but not all of those reasons have to translate or transfer into whatever the next iteration of a brewery that I get involved with.”
Almost exactly three years after the doors of Brew It Up closed the doors for Yolo Brewing Company’s beer hall and brewery opened up. Yolo Brew doesn’t serve food but hosts food trucks. And like Brew It Up it still offers you the opportunity to brew your own beer.
Costello describes the brewery as, “a place where people can come in touch with the brewing process, drink the beers on-site, drink the beers they can’t get out in distribution and we also have the overhead and the space where we can grow a lot.”
With sweat on his brow and days that start at 5:30 in the morning, Costello admits running a brewery is a lot of hard work. Running one that lets guests brew their own beer is even harder. But it is work Costello is willing to put in to be successful and why not, you only live once.
THE BREWERY REVIEWERY
2,000-square foot beer hall before opening on a Sunday morning
Yolo Brewing Company boasts a 2,000 square foot beer hall that is both kid and dog friendly. You’ll find 16 taps featuring a wide variety of beers including the best-selling Orange Blossom Blonde.
Like most breweries in the region, there’s nothing fancy about Yolo Brew as it’s basically a big warehouse. But, the one advantage it offers over some of the competition is space, making it a great destination for large groups or families.
If you visit, be sure to try the Vanilla Cream Stout– my personal favorite.
I want you to imagine something. Think about it deeply. Really see it. Ready? Okay, here it is:
Imagine you are Gary Busey. You’re in New York City, and you stop by a pharmacy to pick up your antipsychotic medication. Afterward, you’re on the subway, and Lindsay Lohan takes the seat next to you. The two of you chat amiably for awhile, then you arrive at your stop. Now, here’s the important part: As you leave the train, you accidentally grab the paper bag Lindsay brought on with her. Got that? Your antipsychotic medication is still on the train. You get home, open the bag, and — unaware of the switch — take whatever pills Lindsay Lohan was carrying with her.
The resulting hallucination is Zardoz.
Warning: Spoilers ahead
I’ve already written about the first half of this 1974 Sean Connery “classic,” directed by John Boorman. In Part 1, we learned that Connery, clad in an orange speedo and go-go boots, had infiltrated the Vortex, secret lair of the immortal Eternals. He’s learned from Eternals May and Friend that their immortality is granted by the Tabernacle, a supercomputer. Punishment for infractions in the Vortex is aging; if you’re bad, you’re still immortal, but you end up an immortal geriatric. When last we saw Connery, Friend had shown him these old immortals, who spend their days waving their arms around like idiots.
Our story continues
As we rejoin our hero, Friend takes him to see the Apathetics, Eternals who are so, well, apathetic that they’re basically catatonic. Connery tries to rouse one from her stupor, but she just stares straight ahead. So he fondles her breast because hey, what’s the point of being Sean Connery if you can’t sexually assault catatonic women?
After some more explanation of the Apathetics, Connery is taken before a large group of Eternals for more study. It seems they’re interested in his ability to become sexually aroused. As Consuela tells the group, Eternal men have lost the ability to achieve arousal because there’s no need for procreation when you’re immortal. This, by the way, is an example of a movie trope I particularly hate: A character relating information that everyone in the movie already knows, merely to impart said information to the audience.
A sexy, sexy lab rat
At any rate, Consuela wants to study the link between “erotic stimulation” and male arousal. She shows Connery some pornographic movies but gets no response. Then he looks at her and instantly becomes aroused, much to her chagrin and her fellow Eternals’ amusement. Hmm… Consuela thinks Connery is a beast. She hates his guts. I wonder if she’ll eventually fall in love with him?
Now Connery undergoes more testing from May. She tells him that he seems to have been genetically engineered, and he is actually far superior — both mentally and physically — to the Eternals. All except that “he can die” thing, I guess. At any rate, May agrees not to tell anyone, since the others would want to exterminate him immediately if they found out.
Later, the Eternals are sitting around a table eating lunch, which Connery is serving. Consuela again insists that they kill him quickly. May and Friend are against it. They take some kind of telepathic vote, and May is given seven days to experiment on him. At the end of that time, he will be exterminated. Then the Eternals decide to undergo “Level 2 Meditation.” This involves standing up and wiggling their fingers in the air like idiots. Friend doesn’t want to meditate with the rest, and he is pronounced a rebel and sentenced to aging.
On their deathbed, they’ll receive total consciousness. So they got that goin’ for ’em, which is nice.
Finally cathing up to the plot
Connery finds Friend, now sporting really awful age makeup, living with the other senile immortals. Friend and the other old Eternals long for death, but that would require the destruction of the Tabernacle. Connery agrees to aid them, then goes looking for May. He finds her wearing a bedsheet over her head. Okay then. She also longs for his help dying, and he agrees to let her probe his mind. It’s now that we find out how Connery got aboard the giant Zardoz head (see Part 1) in the first place.
Connery was an Exterminator, happy with his lot. He raped and killed “Brutals” all day in the Outlands and did a damn fine job of it, thank you. Every so often, the giant Zardoz head, god of the Exterminators, would show up demanding an offering of grain. Things were pretty sweet, all in all.
Then one day, something changed. While raping and killing in an abandoned city, he was lured into a derelict building that turned out to be a library. Finding a child’s spelling book, he taught himself to read. He began devouring book after book. Then one day, he came upon the book — the book that made him realize his entire life was a lie. That book: The Wizard of Oz. In that book, Connery said, God turned out to be a mask worn by an ordinary man. He realized then that the Zardoz head must be something similar.
Son of a bitch!
With his fellow Exterminators, he hatched a plan to stow away aboard the head, fly back to wherever it came from, and take revenge on those who’d lied to the Brutals for centuries. Which finally, more than halfway through the picture, brings us up to speed. We exit this flashback to find Connery and a now-topless May (um, okay then) huddled under the sheet. May wants Connery to make love to her, because it’s the early 70s and she’s a heterosexual woman. But then Consuela arrives and Connery must make his escape.
You scratch my back…
He’s aided by yet another Eternal woman, who tells him that she will teach him everything the Eternals know in return for him impregnating a few of the women and killing her when the time comes. What follows is actually rather visually interesting, or would have been if it hadn’t been so interminable. The Eternals teach Connery through physical contact, so apparently he absorbs hundreds of years of knowledge while sexing them up. This is conveyed through a series of shots of musical notation, equations and artwork projected onto Connery’s face and the nude bodies of various women. A striking sequence, as I said, except it goes on forever.
And ever. And ever.
On the run
At the end of it, Connery is extremely knowledgeable, but also a wanted man. Consuela is leading a lynch mob of Eternals against him. He hides among the Apathetics. There, the girl whose breast he groped earlier, suddenly a little less catatonic, reaches out and wipes a bead of sweat from his brow and licks it off her finger. Suddenly, she’s cured.
That’s right. Sean Connery’s man-sweat cured her catatonia.
She starts curing the other Apathetics, who start having sex, impotence be damned.
(As an aside, these old 70s sci-fi films point up an interesting thing about the young British actors of the time: It was entirely possible for them to deliver very prim-and-proper-sounding line readings while nude and twisted into various sexual contortions. There’s no greater point here; I just find it interesting.)
At any rate, Connery is smuggled to Friend while wearing a wedding dress. Don’t ask me why. I don’t know. Quite frankly, I’ve stopped caring.
You know this movie has won when this doesn’t even phase you.
Revelation
Anyway, Connery finds a safe haven in a building with a lot of mannequins and Greek statuary. No, I don’t know why it’s there. In the building, he meets the reconstituted Arthur (the towel-headed guy he shot at the beginning of this move, thirty-five years ago). Arthur tells Connery that he (Arthur) is actually responsible for Connery’s existence. Two hundred years ago, it seems, Arthur began genetically engineering a line of mutants, of which Connery is the last generation. The ultimate goal, Arthur said, was to create a being capable of destroying the Tabernacle and releasing the Eternals from their curse of immortality.
Connery takes the news that he’s an artificially constructed person rather well. He quickly figures out that the Tabernacle is a peach-sized diamond. How a large diamond can function as a supercomputer is not adequately explained.
Diamonds are forever
Somehow Connery ends up inside the diamond. This isn’t adequately explained either. He wanders around a mirror-maze, beset by images of various Eternals doing the Watusi. No, I don’t know why. And you know what? I don’t care why anymore. Anyway, Connery shoots his reflection and somehow that takes care of the Tabernacle.
Outside the diamond, Consuela finds Connery but can’t bring herself to kill him because she is suddenly and inexplicably in love with him. He steals off with her and a few friendly Eternal women, whom he has apparently impregnated, and sends the other women off on horseback, giving them instructions on how to escape the Vortex — something which he was unable to do himself earlier, but the hell with it.
Then he and Consuela, along with Friend and Arthur, gather with the rest of the Eternals, who are all thrilled to find out that they’re finally mortal. The Eternal lady who helped him earlier asks him to kill her as promised, but Connery is a changed man. He can’t bring himself to do it.
The shocking (yawn) twist
But an instant later, she gets her wish anyway. Connery’s fellow Exterminators have found the Vortex, and they suddenly storm in, guns blazing. The Eternals are extremely pleased at this prospect and beg the Exterminators to kill them. The Exterminators are only too happy to oblige. Soon all the Eternals lay dead, and the Exterminators look around for Connery, possibly so they can all go to the bar and celebrate a job well done with a cold round of Miller Light. But Connery is nowhere to be found.
He has, in fact, stolen away with Consuela. They’re hiding out in the crashed remnants of the giant Zardoz head. Incidentally, the giant Zardoz head crashed earlier. Now Connery and Consuella make their home there. In time-lapse, we see Consuela give birth, the child grow up and leave home, and Consuela and Connery grow old, die, decompose, and finally crumble to dust. The end.
“Ha ha ha! You sat through the whole movie for this! You dumb sons of bitches!” –John Boorman, probably
What the hell was that?
So that’s Zardoz. After watching the film, I’m conflicted. It had a few good performances — particularly Connery’s — and some of the visuals were genuinely striking. On the other hand, it was, from beginning to end, baboon-slappingly insane.
It’s movies like this — so heavy-handed in their allegory and so hippie-dippy that even the pervasive nudity becomes irritating — that make me want to travel back to the late 60s and early 70s, grab a young Baby Boomer, and just shake him until his teeth fly out. “Look, Rainbow Peace Child!” I would scream. “You are nowhere near as profound as you think you are!”
I’d call Zardoz a terrible, freak occurrence, but the fact is that the 60s and 70s were awash in this weird-ass stuff. From Richard Burton lapping Scotch off the floor in Candy to the co-ed nude “zoom circle” in The Harrad Experiment, 60s and 70s cinema was filled with Boomers and Boomer wannabes who felt their social, political, religious, and sexual insights were far more profound than any that came before. While they were the first generation to realize that it was okay to enjoy sex, and they were right about Vietnam, I can’t abide the general air of smug know-it-all-ishness that permeates so many films of the time. It’s enough to make you want to vomit. But Zardoz, at least, gave us all a priceless, priceless gift:
Sean Connery in a wedding dress. For that, Zardoz, you have my everlasting gratitude. Shine on, you crazy diamond!
#SixSeasonsAndAMovie was the battlecry for Community fans everywhere, the mantra they lived by throughout season upon season of uncertainly. During their time on NBC and, later, Yahoo! Screen, the meta-sitcom survived low ratings, public indifference, creator Dan Harmon being fired and rehired, and temporary cancellation to boot. And while the six seasons have, indeed, been fulfilled, the state of its long-promised movie still remains up in the air. With shows like Absolutely Fabulous, The Office U.K. and Looking, to name a few, getting their own feature film spin-offs of late, Community still remains disappointingly movie-less, at least for now. But that might just change. Well, maybe.
Harmon recently made a guest appearance on Larry King Now, and Community‘s fate came up in their discussion. In that time, the showrunner did promise that “it’ll happen” and “it’ll make a great movie.” But that wasn’t without some trepidation along the way.
Harmon’s exact words can be found in the video below, but here’s a transcript.
If I pull out a typewriter right now and write a Community movie, just from my own heart and mind, then I have to go through the heartbreak and agony of finding out which of the people are going to show up to make it. You know? And whereas, on the other hand, if I wait for everyone to line-up and say, “We’re all out of work and ready to do a Community movie.” Well, I guess that’s a bad idea too.
Indeed, much like Arrested Development, the cast all have their fair share of commitments at the moment, which makes scheduling tricky. Gillian Jacobs is currently on Netflix’s Love, for instance, while Ken Jeong leads ABC’s Dr. Ken, Alison Brie lends her voice to Netflix’s BoJack Horseman and Yvette Nicole Brown stars on CBS’ The Odd Couple. Meanwhile, Joel McHale frontlines CBS’ upcoming The Great Indoors, Danny Pudi soon stars in NBC’s Powerless and Donald Glover has FX’s Atlanta on the near horizon. Finding a time for them all to get back together isn’t necessarily easy, but the ever-pessimistic Harmon isn’t completely giving up hope.
So that’s good.
As Collider notes, however, these comments are less optimistic than Harmon’s last few statements on the potential film, which suggested Yahoo! Screen was dying for a movie to happen and Harmon simply biding his time until the moment was right. With the platform’s demise, however, they’ll need a new home and some other investors to step up and pony up the costs. As McHale told Variety a few months back, a Community movie needs to be more than simply a two-hour episode to justify its existence. It’ll need to be “pretty epic” in order to get it right, and only a few people have that kind of cash at their disposal. *cough* Netflix *cough*
Here’s hoping someone will step up and make the movie a reality and the hashtag prophecy a reality. That would be, you know, pretty cool. Cool, cool, cool.
What do you guys think? Check out the video below.
‘Community’ creator Dan Harmon discusses with Larry King the possibility of a movie adaptation of the cult favorite TV series: “It will happen.”
Anyone who has even a passing interest in the 2016 reboot of Ghostbusters will know of the storm surrounding the movie. The trailer has become the most disliked trailer in YouTube’s history: three camps have emerged – people asking why remake a classic, sexist idiots who complained that the movie starred women and a group who denounced anyone who has reservations as misogynists. Paul Feig’s all-female reboot should put the skeptics in their place, including myself.
Erin Gilbert (Kristen Wiig) is a scientist who is on the verge of making tenure at Columbia University when an embarrassing book from her past resurfaces. When she confronts the culprit, co-author and former friend Abby Yates (Melissa McCarthy), they end up discovering paranormal existence. Together Erin and Abby, along with nuclear engineer Jillian Holtzmann (Kate McKinnon) and subway worker Patty Tolan (Leslie Jones), team up to investigate and study the ghosts. A villain (Neil Casey) is also going around New York awakening the spirits for his own purposes.
I will be honest, I was of the view that a remake of Ghostbusters was a pointless endeavor and was not won over by the trailers. Nor have I been a fan of Paul Feig and Melissa McCarthy’s previous movies. But I’m pleased to report my concerns were unfounded for the most part. It’s not as good as the original movie, but this 2016 version is a funny summer comedy amidst a weak summer movie season.
Ghostbusters (2016) has a different style of comedy to the original film – Bill Murray and company had plenty of confidence as the original squad, Murray particularly as Venkman with his deadpan delivery and disregard for authority. Wiig and McCarthy play their roles as social outcasts that have a more awkward approach as they try to avoid embarrassment or have something bad happen to them. Wiig as Erin gets slimed numerous times during the course of the movie, while McCarthy’s has a running gag about complaining about her takeout order. McCarthy has a reputation for being a crass and an abusive comedian – these characteristics aren’t present here, making her much more likable than usual.
McKinnon and Jones are the comedic highlights: McKinnon brings physical comedy and quirk to her role, and her enthusiasm is infectious. Jones as Patty has some of the funniest lines, and her joining the team is more important than Winston answering a job ad: she sees a ghost early on in the movie and acts as the group’s city historian, having knowledge about New York City and its buildings. Patty doesn’t have the scientific knowledge of the other women, but she is still a useful member of the team and willing to help with the experiments and research. Chris Hemsworth gets to show his comedic skills as Kevin the dimwitted receptionist, someone so wonderfully stupid that it ‘s unbelievable how he functions as a human being.
Feig’s previous movies are known for having crass, gross-out humor like the notorious bridal shop scene in Bridemaids. This was curtailed in Ghostbusters because of its PG-13 rating: the worst is a fart joke early on and where its source was. Feig showed he can handle action in Spy and when the ghosts appear there are solid sequences with the proton beams – especially for the final act. Feig also plays with the 3D format, giving us the pointy style where ghosts and beams pop out of the screen and the frame. It was similar to the theme park ride T2 3-D: Battle Across Time at Universal Studios.
Feig and his co-writer Katie Dippold at times are too reliant on self-referential humor and pop culture references like Patrick Swayze, The Shinning, and The Exorcist. There no great lines like ‘this man has no dick’ and ‘I’ve seen shit that’ll turn you white’. But there are witty lines throughout the movie, and Feig’s brand of humor is present, especially during the first part of the film – for better and for worse.
Ghostbusters plays it safe with its story: it’s a standard origins story like the original where the girls have set up their business, fight some ghosts, test some new equipment and have a big final battle. The reboot does borrow story element from the previous two movies – the first half is like the original, setting up the Ghostbusters business – while the creepy villain and the dead coming back to conquer New York is like Ghostbusters 2. The reboot is willing to be a homage to the original two movies, even its unwillingness to take risks – a wise decision considering the controversy surrounding the reboot before its release.
1984’s Ghostbusters is an enduring classic and its place in movie history is undisputed. The reboot is more a disposable summer movie which does not match its namesake but still has a strong dynamic with its four leads and Sony will want to capitalize on the series. If they make a sequel, please do not have the Ghostbusters going out of business and have to restart it again like in Ghostbusters 2.
— Monkeys Fight Robots (@monkeys_robots) July 12, 2016
In the meantime, the fine folks over at Forgehouse Films created a nice Walking Dead versus Pokémon GO adventure. What else are we going to watch as ‘Fear the Walking Dead’ is on a break, and ‘The Walking Dead’ doesn’t return until October.
