Connect with us

Reviews

‘Ghostbusters: Afterlife’ Has the Spirit of Modern Franchises, Not the Original Movie | Review

Published

on

‘Ghostbusters: Afterlife’ Has the Spirit of Modern Franchises, Not the Original Movie | Review

Here’s why 1984’s Ghostbusters “works”: it’s a simple comic juxtaposition. You start with a big, outlandish premise—ghosts are real and they’re the forebearer of an apocalyptic event. In a straight sci-fi action movie, you would get a standard sci-fi action hero to save the day. The joke in Ghostbusters is that you have four guys who are in it as a business proposition. They’re not the most heroic characters; they’re kind of losers. They’re failed academics who started a business and became local celebrities. The juxtaposition is that you take the big supernatural hook, and you contrast it with regular guys who kind of fell ass-backwards into saving the world. From there, Ghostbusters has the freedom to be incredibly funny and utilize the different comic talents of its lead actors.

But then something unfortunate happened: Ghostbusters became beloved, not in a way that other 80s comedies are beloved, but beloved in the way a genre property, and more importantly, the way Intellectual Property (IP) gets beloved. Ghostbusters is far from the only popular comedy of the 1980s, but Trading Places, Coming to America, and Stripes aren’t films relying on big VFX and they certainly don’t have iconography that can then be marketed like proton packs or a distinctive vehicle. And when you can sell people a bunch of stuff and make their fandom connected to “the thing”, then the text itself becomes lost. Ironically, it becomes a sort of holy scripture disconnected from what the script actually says. Therefore, Ghostbusters, a comedy about four schlubs who end up saving New York City from a giant marshmallow man with lines like “He’s a sailor, he’s in New York; we get this guy laid, we won’t have any trouble!” now becomes something serious.

Advertisement


RELATED: ‘Ghostbusters: Afterlife’ Director Jason Reitman on How the Marketing Hasn’t Given Away All the Surprises

That’s how you get to Ghostbusters: Afterlife, which, despite coming from Jason Reitman, the Oscar-nominated director and son of Ghostbusters director Ivan Reitman, seems to miss the mark entirely in its relentless devotion to the idea of what Ghostbusters means to fans rather than that Ghostbusters actually is as a movie. For some, that may seem like a meaningless distinction, but when you watch it play out in Ghostbusters: Afterlife, you see you’re getting something far worse than nostalgia. You’re getting fan service completely divorced from any kind of story or even the concept of the thing people are supposedly a fan of. The original Ghostbusters is a comedy, and Ghostbusters: Afterlifebarely has jokes. The original Ghostbusters is about unlikely heroes, and Ghostbusters: Afterlife is about heroism being a birthright. The original Ghostbusters is knowingly irreverent and leans into poking fun at its own premise (“No human being would stack books like this.”), and Ghostbusters: Afterlife is all about reverence.


Callie (Carrie Coon) is the struggling mom of teenager Trevor (Finn Wolfhard) and precocious genius Phoebe (Mckenna Grace), and they’ve recently been evicted from their home. Callie’s mysterious and estranged father just died and left her his dirt farm in Summerville, Oklahoma, so the family goes to the middle of nowhere to try and figure out what to do next. Trevor takes to restoring an old Cadillac he found in the barn and pining for Lucky (Celeste O’Connor) a waitress at a local restaurant. Meanwhile, Phoebe, even though she’s a genius, goes to summer school where she meets teacher/seismologist Mr. Grooberson (Paul Rudd). The two connect, along with another young student, “Podcast” (Logan Kim), especially after Phoebe finds some of her grandfather’s old tools like a PKE Meter and a ghost trap. As Phoebe discovers her family’s legacy, the town of Summerville is faced with a rising paranormal activity.


Advertisement

Ghostbusters: Afterlife doesn’t really have character arcs. There’s some vague notion of Phoebe, who is supposed to be an outcast because she’s nerdy, finding acceptance and a sense of self upon learning that her grandfather was a ghostbuster. You can kind of see Callie getting a glimpse of a transformation as she goes from someone who thought her father abandoned her to someone who realizes that he was actually a great man. You can see Trevor in this movie because if the main characters were just Phoebe and Callie, the same people who lost their shit in 2016 over an all-female Ghostbusters installment would get angry again and we simply must keep indulging the most toxic element of any fanbase because they are the most vocal. But none of these characters really grow or change that much over the course of the movie as much as they simply make discoveries about the past.


And the lack of any kind of character development isn’t necessarily a problem for a Ghostbusters movie. After all, Peter Venkman, Ray Stantz, et al. are the same guys at the end of the movie as they were at the beginning. Their experiences don’t really change them or force them to grow and that’s fine because Ghostbusters is a comedy. In place of dramatic transformation, it has characters being funny. You don’t really want them to change because they’re funny guys at the beginning and they’re funny guys at the end. If Peter Venkman loses his irreverent attitude, it becomes less funny when the woman he’s chasing (Sigourney Weaver) starts acting like a dog because she’s possessed by a demonic spirit. But if your movie has no character development and it’s not funny, you get Ghostbusters: Afterlife, which believes its chief duty is worship.


This is a weird way to position a Ghostbusters movie, but it’s a fairly common way to position any new installment of beloved IP. The legacyquel has become a dominant presence for long-running franchises, especially since the massive success of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. From a studio standpoint, it makes for a cold but sensible calculus: the original actors are too old and/or not popular enough to headline a sequel on their own. However, through the transitive property, if we “respect” the original property, we have therefore “respected” the fanbase, and so by handing the torch, we can get younger actors into the lead roles to carry the franchise forward. The past is acknowledged, the future is secured, and the franchise—the most important thing to the people financially backing the movie—can continue to print money.


Advertisement

Sometimes this approach works. Star Wars has always been about family ever since Luke Skywalker wanted to know what happened to his father in A New Hope. It works with Creed because it’s a character-driven narrative about a son finding a surrogate father figure while wrestling with the absence of his biological father. But Ghostbusters is a supernatural comedy about four schmoes who have no business saving the world and manage to do it anyway. It’s a film predicated on the comedic talents of its leads and then throwing them into a supernatural premise. To truly “honor” that—funny people fighting ghosts—you would get something akin to 2016’s Ghostbusters: Answer the Call. However, that movie created “controversy” in that a vocal segment of the fanbase was mad online and did not feel sufficiently honored because this fictional profession can’t have women or something. Anyway, proper reverence was not achieved, that harmed the franchise’s ability to print money, and so we arrive back Ghostbusters: Afterlife.


Ghostbusters: Afterlife does not honor the original movie; it honors the fans of the original movie, or at least whom these fans imagine themselves to be. These are people who have the jumpsuits and the proton pack replicas and can quote the original movie chapter and verse. For them, that’s what matters about Ghostbusters—the objectification of the thing, not its essence. A supernatural comedy is all well and good, but it’s more important that the new characters revere and respect the old thing like the fans do. But in this constant respect, they miss the soul of what Ghostbusterswas, which was trying to make people laugh. Afterlife has a smattering of jokes, but my audience was largely quiet during the screening. The comedy in Afterlife is secondary to the reverence.

It’s not impossible to have characters revere the past (again, see The Force Awakens), but if they’re going to do so, they need to have strong arcs of their own where the exploration of the past propels them forward on their own journey. Callie, Trevor, and Phoebe are ostensibly a family, but Afterlife treats them more like tourists in a Ghostbusters museum. There’s no texture or nuance to the relationship between these three characters, and Afterlifemoves quickly to move them in their own directions with Trevor hanging with Lucky (and not having any kind of arc to speak of), Callie coming out of a room in her father’s dilapidated farmhouse whenever she is summoned by other characters, and Phoebe really driving the action forward in so far as she’s the person figuring everything out and is clearly designed as Egon’s heir apparent. But that’s not a family beyond “genetic descendants to whom I bequeath my stuff.”


Advertisement

That feels where Jason Reitman is as a director with this movie. A filmmaker who was making exciting works with Thank You for Smoking, Juno, and Up in the Air, Reitman hasn’t really had a smash hit in over a decade although I would argue that films like Young Adult and Tully are pretty great and Labor Day and Men, Women & Childrenare treated too harshly. Reitman needs a hit, Sony Pictures needs Ghostbusters to be an ongoing franchise, and fans want to be paid proper reverence, not by what 1984’s Ghostbusters actually was, but what it has come to mean to them over the past decades. But this mix means everyone loses their personality along the way. Reitman’s direction is anonymous beyond his last name and a story about inheritance, this Ghostbusters lacks any personality outside of the Mckenna’s memorable performance, and the fans get some primo pandering where enjoyment is based on cameos and spotting Easter eggs rather than respecting your audience enough to give them a worthwhile story. I can’t help but wonder if this is a movie Jason Reitman really wanted to make or if it was a movie he felt he was forced to make at this point in his career.


Either way, the message of the movie is that Ghostbusters is too important to be left to just anyone; it must be placed in the hands of those who will respect and cherish it. When you’re working in the realm of grand myth or character drama, you can get away with that, but 1984’s Ghostbusters is neither of those things. Ghostbusters: Afterlife ends up being “for the fans” in the worst sense of the term because Afterlife is a celebration of being a fan rather than the film that is supposedly being celebrated. That’s a sad reflection on the state of fandom because while Ghostbusters doesn’t always have to be a comedy about four regular guys fighting ghosts, it seems off to have it be a family dramedy that’s not really about family and not really funny and doesn’t have dramatic stakes. All that’s left is a collection of references designed to be revered. It’s a reanimated corpse shambling around, begging for your approval.


Rating: D-

Advertisement


Reviews

Bullet Train Review: A Wickedly Funny, High-Octane Thrill Ride

Published

on

By

Bullet Train Review: A Wickedly Funny, High-Octane Thrill Ride

Brad Pitt leads a wickedly funny ensemble in a high-octane actioner loaded with twists. Adapted from the 2010 Japanese novel by Kōtarō Isaka, Bullet Train has a bevy of disparate assassins manipulated by a mysterious criminal mastermind. Stuntman turned action director, David Leitch (John Wick, Atomic Blonde), stays true to form with unrelenting bloody and flamboyant violence. The codenamed characters get downright verbose before beating, stabbing, and shooting each other to bits. The loquacious banter tends to run long, but the narrative always bounces back with sharp reveals. Strap in for a helluva ride.

Ladybug (Pitt) boards the overnight bullet train to Tokyo with a newfound sense of self. He’s chock-full of philosophy after recovering from a near fatal ambush. Ladybug ignores his unseen handler’s advice to take a gun. Surely any issues can be resolved peacefully. The job seems straightforward enough. Steal a briefcase with a sticker and exit at the next stop.

Advertisement

Also on board are Lemon (Brian Tyree Henry) and Tangerine (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), ruthless “twins” known for their brutal methods. Lemon is obsessed with the British children’s show “Thomas & Friends”. He reads people by comparing them to the anthropomorphized trains. The twins are escorting the previously kidnapped son (Logan Lerman) of a powerful gangster, the White Death (Michael Shannon).

None of the hired guns are aware of the Father, aka Yuichi Kimura’s (Andrew Koji), mission. He’s out for vengeance but foolishly runs into a deceptive figure. The Prince (Joey King) has a score to settle with the White Death. Meanwhile, the Wolf (Bad Bunny) joins the fray after his truly horrific Mexican wedding. He’s also ready for serious comeuppance. Ladybug quickly realizes they’re all unwitting pawns in a dangerous game. Someone has packed the train with killers for an unknown purpose. He desperately wants to get off but can’t seem to escape the carnage.


Related: I Love My Dad Review: Patton Oswalt’s Delightfully Cringeworthy Catfishing Comedy

Cast of Bullet Train

Bullet Train introduces the cast with splashy entrances that flashes back to their dark pasts. The murderous montages are informative but don’t fill in every gap. The script doles out more critical information as the bodies pile up. Alliances bounce back and forth as everyone wonders who’s actually pulling the strings. The whodunit element works well as the audience becomes embroiled in a series of betrayals. You don’t have a sense of the plot’s true trajectory until the third act. The film builds to a showdown that delivers a huge action payoff.

Advertisement

Bullet Train has complex characters that each contribute slices of devilish humor. Brad Pitt preaching self-help and understanding is an effective gag throughout. Brian Tyree Henry’s constant comparisons to Thomas & Friends aren’t as comical but play an important role in the story. There are a lot of moving parts. Leitch, who worked as Pitt’s stunt double for years, is clearly fond of his players. He gives everyone a chance to babble incessantly. I would have trimmed the dialogue to be more incisive.


The action scenes are worth the price of admission. Leitch has a great eye for mixing stylized set pieces with intimate fights. He knows when to go big and small. You never feel let down by his pacing. There’s always the right amount of adrenaline to keep your pulse pumping. Bullet Train is another feather in a skilled filmmaker’s cap. Watch out for A-list cameos and a mid-credits scene.

Bullet Train is a production of Columbia Pictures, Fuqua Films, and 87North Productions. It will be released theatrically on August 5th from Sony Pictures.

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Reviews

Bullet Train Review: Brad Pitt Has A Blast In The Silly And Badass Action Comedy

Published

on

By

Bullet Train Review: Brad Pitt Has A Blast In The Silly And Badass Action Comedy

If orchestrated properly, with adjusted stakes, tone, and atmosphere, there can be a beautiful, symbiotic relationship between intense action and comedy. A hero pulling off a rapid and vicious series of blows against an opponent can be savage and dramatic in one context, but it can also be so deliriously awesome that an audience’s first reaction is to laugh. Fast paced martial arts can be used for wonderful physical humor (see: the legendary career of Jackie Chan), and the best examples provide dual layers of entertainment: you marvel at the skill in all the ass-kicking, and cackle at the creativity in the choreography.

This is a sweet spot that filmmaker David Leitch knows well. After peppering funny moments in John Wick and Atomic Blonde at the start of his directorial career, he brilliantly utilized the action/comedy weapon that is Ryan Reynolds in Deadpool 2, and crafted some excellent physicality with the unique styles of Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham in Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw. His latest, Bullet Train, is another effort that takes aim at that particular tonal target, this time with his most expansive ensemble yet, and it’s another success. With a sensibility that could be described as early Guy Ritchie with more specific action focus, it’s a movie that is both silly and skilled and inspires its primary star in particular to do energetic and engaging work.

Based on the novel Maria Beetle by Kōtarō Isaka, the film weaves multiple narrative threads through the cars of the titular bullet train as it speeds through the country of Japan – all of the protagonists being killers with their own particular reason and motivation for being aboard. Ladybug (Brad Pitt), for example, is a hired gun who has been tasked by his handler (Sandra Bullock) to perform what sounds like a simple job: find a briefcase marked with a train sticker and steal it. What he doesn’t know, though, is that said briefcase belongs to a pair of British hit men named Lemon (Brian Tyree Henry) and Tangerine (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), and that the contents include the recovered ransom for the kidnapped son (Logan Lerman) of a powerful crime lord known as The White Death.

Meanwhile, Kimura a.k.a. The Father (Andrew Koji) is on the bullet train because he is on a mission of vengeance – hunting down the person responsible for nearly killing his son by pushing the boy off of a building. What he doesn’t expect is that the individual he is looking for is a young woman identified as The Prince (Joey King), and that she has purposefully gotten him on the high speed rail with the intention of forcing him to execute an assassination attempt.

And while five killers sharing the space would be enough for most movies, Bullet Train actually has even more that pop in and surprise throughout the film’s runtime – and their roles are worth keeping as a secret pre-release.

Advertisement

Bullet Train has a chaotic storyline, but the pieces properly connect as a fun puzzle.

Narratively speaking, Bullet Train is a messy movie to put together, as focus briskly ping-pongs between the different players, but everything stays in harmony as the film persistently finds ways to build on each protagonist’s arc. This is particularly cool later in the movie as different characters are drawn together from individual angles and instant conflict is generated from their simple interaction.

The film is at its best when it keeps things simple, but it does let things go off the rails at times (if you’ll pardon the pun). This is especially true as it gets into the third act and it tries to pull off stunts like one of the leads leaping from a platform on to the back of the train as it leaves a station; it’s both a problem for the “rules” of the universe and in its strained use of visual effects. The movie also frequently tries to get a bit too cute and Tarantino-esque with what are admittedly familiar-but-not-quite-stock characters – the most prominent example being an ongoing and quickly tiresome gag with Lemon explaining that he understands people through the lens of Thomas The Tank Engine.

Primarily, though, it’s a movie that is able to generate its entertainment with engaging and quippy dynamics between the members of the ensemble, both when they are talking out their issues and trying to kill one another.

David Leitch puts a lot of exciting and weird fights in a confined space, and is at its best when working with a “less is more” philosophy.

Coming from a stunt background, both as a performer and a coordinator, David Leitch’s bread and butter remains deftly and specifically choreographed action sequences, and Bullet Train proves to be a terrific challenge and opportunity for his skills. Regardless of where you are in the titular transport, space is not a luxury, and the best fights in the movie are those that are being fought only between the characters, but against the limitations provided by the location.

There are guns, knives and explosives in the mix, but Bullet Train also has some terrific “found item” moments that add spice and humor to the various showdowns, whether it’s a pocketed cell phone saving a character’s life from a blade, a laptop making for a solid cudgel, a water bottle making for a useful projectile, or a venomous snake showing up at a perfect moment.

Once again we see David Leitch work a special magic turning dramatic and comedic actors into badasses with slick and stylish moves, and while everyone shows off some terrific skills, it’s very much the Brad Pitt show at the end of the day.

Advertisement

Brad Pitt’s joy in the role of Ladybug is palpable.

At the nexus of everything good in Bullet Train is Brad Pitt, who very clearly had a blast reuniting with David Leitch (who performed the actor’s stunts in films including Fight Club, The Mexican, Mr. And Mrs. Smith and Troy). He’s a joy to watch in action not just because of the talented craft he demonstrates in his physicality, but how he channels the psychology of the character. As we meet him, Ladybug is reluctantly getting back into his business following a number of important breakthroughs with his therapist, and Pitt does a fantastic job conveying that he doesn’t ever want to choose violence as a first answer – both via verbal pleas and defense-heavy moves. Action/comedy is a genre he should revisit a lot more often.

Bullet Train doesn’t aim to revolutionize hitman movies, but instead plays with a tongue-in-cheek vibe that lets you recognize the tropes and appreciate how the film plays with them. It’s a slick/goofy action movie that is both contained and wild, and a satisfying late summer release.

Continue Reading

Reviews

Luck Review: A Spectacular Debut Film from Skydance Animation

Published

on

By

Luck Review: A Spectacular Debut Film from Skydance Animation

The world’s unluckiest woman enters a magical land to change the fortunes of a fellow orphan. Luck will make you smile and possibly shed a few tears. The big-budget, CGI animated fantasy shines a spotlight on needy children while telling a truly original story. An assortment of lucky critters and creatures dazzle in a spectacular setting. The highly imaginative narrative gives age-old superstitions a dynamic new spin. Luck is a brilliant first film from Skydance Animation.

Sam Greenfield (Eva Noblezada) reaches her eighteenth birthday with trepidation. She’s finally aged out of the foster care system. Sam never found her “forever family”. She spent her entire life living in orphanages. It doesn’t help that Sam has the worst luck. Everything she does or touches ends in abject disaster. Her only thoughts are for young Hazel (Adelynn Spoon), Sam’s roommate at the girls home. Sam has been set up with a job and tiny apartment. She has to stay in school and employed to remain housed.

Advertisement

Sam’s first day at Marv’s (Lil Rel Howery) floral shop goes exactly as expected. She sadly eats dinner sitting on a sidewalk. Sam learns that Hazel’s weekend trip with a foster family was canceled. She gives half of her sandwich to a curious black cat. It scampers away but leaves a strange penny behind.

The following day is a revelation. Sam’s lucky penny changes everything. Her ecstatic mood sours when she loses the penny in spectacular fashion. Stewing on the sidewalk, Sam’s surprised when the black cat returns. She’s astonished when Bob (Simon Pegg) asks for his penny. The “travel penny” is the only way a creature from the Land of the Luck stays safe in the human world. She follows an unnerved Bob back through the portal to the Land of Luck. Sam has to find another lucky penny to help Hazel. Bob reluctantly agrees, but they have to be careful. Misdeeds end up in banishment to Bad Luck.

Related: Bullet Train Review: A Wickedly Funny, High-Octaine Thrill Ride

Advertisement

The Land of Luck

The Land of Luck is an absolute joy to behold. Leprechauns, cats, pigs, and rabbits, lucky creatures, are the bureaucrats tasked with spreading good fortune. Bringing Sam in such a place is a recipe for absolute chaos. Bob, and his leprechaun assistant Gerry’s (Colin O’Donoghue), efforts to contain Sam’s bad luck will have audiences in stitches. I’m still chuckling at Sam’s “Latvian leprechaun” disguise; their harebrained excuse for why she’s so much bigger than everyone else.

Luck’s serious themes are artfully addressed. Sam’s lonely childhood, and her desperate efforts to change Hazel’s, brings a melancholic touch to the narrative. The film reminds us to not take love and family for granted. Every kid deserves care, nurturing, and a safe place to grow. It shouldn’t take luck or chance for a child to find a “forever home”.

Insert sigh here. Recent headlines concerning John Lasseter (Toy Story, Cars) will undoubtedly cloud this film’s release. The genius storyteller and animator behind Pixar’s success left to head Skydance Animation after awful “Me Too” allegations. He’s brought his incredible talent to Luck, and it shows. This wonderful film deserves to be judged on its own merits. Sometimes we must divorce ourselves from art and the personality of the artist.

Advertisement

Luck is a production of Skydance Animation and Apple Original Films. It will have an exclusive Apple TV+ premiere on August 5th.

Continue Reading

Trending