Ghostbusters: Afterlife (Jason Reitman, 2021)

[mfunk9786]

Totally right, shows how little I know about the original film that I thought it was directed by Ramis!

[flyonthewall2983]

Just on the surface, Ramis' work seemed less stylized than Ivan Reitman's. They both largely worked within comedy but I don't think Ramis would ever have had the kind of interest in special effects and other extensive post-production work like Ivan did for Ghostbusters.

[knives]

Yeah, they're definitely similar but their different approaches to the magical is a good tell tell sign. Just compare the originals to Groundhog Day's more casual approach.

[flyonthewall2983]

Ramis did dabble in SFX in Multiplicity and Bedazzled, but I feel like Reitman had a more intricate approach to such things. The movie he did after Ghostbusters had a big sequence with fire, for example and I don't think Ramis would ever have had the nerve to go so far with what he did. I think the closest to computer effects in Groundhog Day is Andie MacDowell fooling around in front of the green screen in the TV studio.

[flyonthewall2983]

It's release has been delayed, and will come out next year.

[bearcuborg]

2nd Trailer

[Finch]

Feels as ingratiating to the angry fan crowd as the Rise of Skywalker marketing.

[Brian C]

I went to see this tonight, and it's ... OK, I guess. Mfunk's point on the previous page about this not having the comedy heart of the original turns out to be spot-on, and while I've never seen any of Stranger Things, I suspect that domino's comparison to that show is spot-on as well. In a lot of ways, it's a strange movie; it's a sequel in narrative, but it didn't have to be, and it feels like it could have been just another monster-movie script pulled off the shelf and retconned with Ghostbusters nostalgia. It doesn't feel like a sequel, for the most part, even though the movie calls attention to its sequelness in practically every scene. Honestly this aspect of the film is its most annoying - it's beyond fan service, it's like the filmmakers are afraid we'll forget what a nostalgia trip we're on and lose interest without it.

Maybe they have a point, because as a monster-movie it mostly goes through the motions. There's a lot of early scenes of the characters discovering Ghostbuster stuff but it's weirdly joyless and rote. At one point near the beginning, a few characters set a giant terrifying ghost dog loose and barely seem to care. For me it only really came alive at one moment: the kids' first pursuit of the ghost in the car, which is a really nice action-movie dramatization of Phoebe's shedding her social-reject persona and finding herself and her calling in life. And it's one of the only moments in the movie where the kids are allowed to be excited by what's going on.

I guess thinking back to the original, the story itself was pretty lame, but it had a great collection of comic actors who mostly wrote their own stuff. Here, they're replaced by kids who, other than McKenna Grace who is wonderful, don't really have anything to do and spend most of their time desperately waiting around until the film gives them something to do. There's no effort by the filmmakers to characterize them at all for the most part, aside from Grace's character, and even the annoying comic relief kid never gets to be anything other than the comic relief. And of course since it's written by adults writing for kids, the dialogue is flat and functional and the humor is mostly pretty lame (not including Phoebe's intentionally lame jokes, which is a different thing, and sound like they're ripped from Aaron Sorkin's junior-high notebooks).

The original cast is barely in it, and while I won't get into their roles in detail, I will say that I sort of resented how they're used, and it only confirms my suspicion that the junior Reitman didn't really give much of a shit about this story on its own terms.

Still and all, it's not a disaster, and it passes the time. I think my ultimate reaction is that the movie would have worked better on every level if Ramis was still alive and the movie had been built around his (living) character. But, alas.

[hanshotfirst1138]

I had fun with this, but it’s very, very slight and narrow in function. That’s fine-it really has no aspirations to do anything other be a nostalgia trip for fans of the original-but it kind of limits how good it can be. It’s a fun enough way to pass two hours though. McKenna Grace is really adorable.