Ghostbusters: Afterlife Review (2021, Sci-Fi/Horror/Comedy, Sony Pictures/Columbia Pictures/Bron Creative/Ghost Corps)

 

 

 

I ain't 'fraid of no waxing nostalgic

 

This film was a long time in the making. Since the last entry in this exact series (the 2016 reboot/remake is not tied into the more familiar first two films, at least not directly) was released in 1989, that means that this film took 32 years to make. So in effect, it took all of us nearly as long to get a film sequel to the 2nd mediocre film as I have been alive on this earth. Yikes, but that's not an issue really.

 

What is an issue, for me anyway, is how mixed my feelings are after having seen it in theatres on opening weekend, which have persisted to this day. At first I was so excited that I was shaking, but after a while my anticipation of great things died down akin to a fire waning into mere embers. In part because as the film rolled on more and more, I felt something similar to what I did when I saw the 2016 film in theatres almost six years ago: familiarity with the story beats. This is not a new criticism of either film, but I felt it big time in this one. While the 2016 movie tried (and mostly failed) to do something new (like giving us a new, fresh set of faces not tethered to the original crew), this film simply relies on an almost overwhelming amount of nostalgia value to achieve its goals. It just doesn't have much going for itself as a standalone feature in this franchise.

 

So let's get some positivity in this review; the presentation is very good. There's something cathartic about seeing the familiar again, like the proton packs, the ECTO-1 vehicle, the ghost trap, and others. While the fictional inclusion of the in-universe adverts for the original crew showing on fake YouTube were a bit hard to swallow (this didn't bother me, it just seemed to be an odd, seemingly unintentional breaking of the fourth wall that I never would have expected), almost everything else that reminded us, the viewers, of the original classic are present & accounted for, and they work. 

At least for a while...

You see, this film hinges too much on material from the original film and ends up losing its own identity as a result. What could have been a decent look into a budding, new generation of Ghostbusters, ended up a middling re-tread of not just tropes, but plot threads from the first movie decades ago. There's a problem with all of that: we, the audience, could just watch the (significantly better) original in that case. Why bother with a long-awaited sequel that recycles so much of the first film, when you can just stick with said film and mostly ignore this one with little consequence?

The film presents dedications to the memory of Harold Ramis, the one who played Egon Spengler (but not the person who "played" the character in the opening sequence, whose face is never shown for obvious reasons), and I feel conflicted about them. On the one hand, it is touching to give the character a great sendoff (even if the ideas behind what led up to the film's events are very questionable); on the other hand, they seem exploitative to me. There's absolutely nothing wrong with giving a text-based dedication to Harold Ramis like most films do, but this film went further. It featured a CGI-based rendition of Egon Spengler. But that wasn't Harold Ramis, obviously, but for another thing...

...this was a version of Harold Ramis that is more-or-less congruent with what most audiences remember of Egon Spengler (tall, lanky, nerdy-looking, wearing glasses, etc.) but age-appropriate. Never mind what it would mean for younger audiences. Despite the immediately-touching aspects of this on-screen digital necromancy, Harold Ramis, towards the end of his life, was markedly different physically. Take a gander:

 

 

Notice a difference? I'm not engaging in any sort of post-humous body-shaming here because that's not my intention here. Instead, why couldn't the CGI-rendition of "Harold Ramis" be – I don't know – accurate to how he was towards the end of his actual life? Given that in-universe, he obviously grew old and apart from all friends and family since the events of the second film, why couldn't he resemble the real-life Harold Ramis? I don't get why they couldn't do that instead of the idealized rendition they gave us in the film proper. I won't get into the greater ethical dilemmas this trend of digital necromancy may pose in future film releases, so I'll leave it at that.

 

The original members of the team didn't need to be here, since they didn't really amount to anything more than appeal to nostalgia. Ray's appearance could have been fleshed out a bit more, and better too, but he also could have been left out of the climax. These characters only serve to undermine not just the new characters, but the very principle of this film: ushering in a new generation of Ghostbusters. Call-outs are good, but to have them show up in the flesh, with their appearance amounting to nothing more than a cringe-worthy nod to a silly joke from the original film's climactic battle? I'd have passed on that.

There are genuinely fun moments in the film. It has an upbeat chase & gunner sequence that wasn't done before in the film franchise; brief (and few) sequences with Paul Rudd are always welcome; some intriguing story ideas were explored a bit, even if they went nowhere (sadly enough). There was potential for something pretty good here. If only that potential was explored rather than the end product. I'd rather have the (canonical? Not sure if it has that status anymore) 2009 videogame from Terminal Reality than this one. 

It's not even all that funny, either, and the original was mostly a sex-charged comedy-horror romp that was honestly a needle-in-a-haystack lucky break for all & sundry. This was a conflicted waste of potential and time, sadly enough. We all deserved better, Harold Ramis deserved a better send-off (just the text would have been excellent), and Jason Reitman should have had full reign over the creative & directorial touches needed to give this film the proper touches to allow it to stand out. It only took about 38 years to do, you know?

C

 

The Good:

+ It's Ghostbusters

+ Some genuinely solid moments in the film, as mentioned in the body of the review

+ Paul Rudd

+ Looks good, sounds good

+ Phoebe McKenna did a decent-enough job in the lead role 

+ It's nice that Harold Ramis got a touching dedication, but... 

+ Was filmed in (mostly) local areas around where I live (at time of writing)

The Bad:

- Recycles much of the original film, especially as the film drags on

- Harold Ramis' memory was...exploited in this film. Good intentions were there, sure, but "the road to hell is paved on good intentions", right?

- Why even have the classic Ghostbusters at all? They didn't do anything important or conducive to a distinct, new experience.

- Wal-Mart...Wal-Mart...Wal-Mart

- Re-uses Gozer as the main villain once again. Why? Why not Ivo Shandor, like in the 2009 videogame? He even made an appearance, only to be suddenly killed off by Gozer for no good reason.

- Not all that funny

- Plot-holes aplenty

- Why is Finn Wolfhard even here? His character barely makes sense and is just a convenient plot device. 

- Give me Slimer, not...Muncher.

Teenage Mutant Megan Fox Review (2014, Action/Comedy/Sci-Fi, Paramount Pictures/Nickelodeon Films)

Cowabunga, said no Megan Fox ever.

Once mired by idiotic announcements that the film would be about alien, mutant, ninja, turtles who happen to be teenagers (?), as well as other Michael Bay hokum, people were worried for a while that this would be a complete flop of a movie. So Michael relented, sobered up just long enough to change his mind, and we then got this product. I won't lie; this film isn't Oscar material, but it does what it's supposed to. At least in most cases it does.

So the film follows our gang, after something like twenty-five minutes of poorly-acted April O'Neil thanks to the latent (still) talents of Megan Fox. A wasted opportunity Shredder and his boring-as-hell Foot clan are the bad guys. April O'Neil Megan Fox is connected to everybody in this universe, too, because Bay had to suck up to Fox in some way or another I guess. On another note, Fox apparently likes, or liked the comics so that had to mean she was going to do a stellar job, right? Well, if you didn't find some of her scenes in the first twenty or so minutes cringe-worthy then you might find the rest of the movie watchable since her role diminishes a little. Otherwise, I've warned you of what you're getting into. There's a reason I called this "Teenage Mutant Megan Fox" and that's because this film centers almost entirely around her.

Our heroes are treated exactly like the Transformers, which so happens to be another property that Michael Bay wanted to bless with his cerebral brand of film-making (I hope the sarcasm was obvious). They don't appear in full until around 25 or so minutes into the movie. And by the time they do appear it's revealed (in typical Bay fashion) that they're loud, superhumanly strong (I'll get to that in a bit), and make for ample opportunities of copious amounts of explosions. The latter point is Michael Bay 101 so given that he's the producer of this movie, you had to see it coming.

If this outing gets one thing right, it's the action. Future installment flaws aside (thanks to the aforementioned superhuman strength the turtles now possess), you can't pretend this movie isn't fun in any way. Incessant, freakishly annoying shaky cams aside, it's a blast watching them swing and kick, slice n' dice through The Foot, even if the Foot in this movie consists entirely of gun-toting goofballs who don't stand a chance against our heroes at all. The final fight scene in particular takes the cake, and let's not forget the Splinter vs. Shredder melee earlier on, the former of whom manages to hold his own against the antagonist for a few minutes before getting beaten. Keep in mind that the Shredder is utilizing a strength-enhancing suit of power armour, which was obviously the only way he could stand a chance against the turtles. Of course, while all that fun stuff happens, ordinary humans like April and what's his name, the guy who objectifies her every five seconds, can't even give us anything like the spectacle of the turtles because they're lame human beings with no superhuman strength to speak of.

That's roughly all the film actually gets right. The backstories are all fine enough, but it's the way it's executed that leaves some things to be desired. For one, April is at the center of fucking everything in this movie. She owned all the turtles AND Splinter as pets as a child; HER dad inadvertently performed experiments on them, not knowing they were for a sinister purpose (apparently carrying out a plan that was a ripoff of the first Amazing Spider-Man film which in this movie universe took at least a dozen years to execute); SHE has a connection to Eric Sachs/Sacks, one of the brains behind the evil plot of the movie; SHE put them in the sewers of New York (why?); SHE unites the turtles to fight a greater enemy; SHE manages to deliver the killing/defeating blow on the Shredder. That's not covering all the damn screen time she gets. Was Megan Fox really that damn attractive? I guess so!

That's not all of it, either. It's hard to discern whether this film is truly for kids or for youth, or adults, or god knows who because of the rampant sexual innuendo and imagery. We're not talking nudity here, but objectification (not to come across as a self-righteous type but it's quite blatant in this movie) of mainly Megan Fox. She's trying to do her part in the mountain scene? Let's focus on her ass hanging on the passenger window! Michaelangelo first meets O'Neil? Come across as a stalker type and drop highly-suggestive sexual innuendos, which, given the character's species and their 'assets', comes across as REALLY FUCKING CREEPY. O'Neil's reporter partner drops half-wit come-ons every chance he gets. Her first on-screen reporting immediately earns her comments about her boobs. Nobody takes her seriously, professionally OR personally, which includes the likes of a washed-up Whoopie Goldberg for crying out loud. So, why are we supposed to?

And then there's a scene where the turtles return home after having met Meg-- er April O'Neil in the flesh, only for them to be caught by Splinter having disobeyed an order. They are instructed to perform odd feats of endurance while Splinter teases them with...Pizza Hut. The entire scene would be right at home in the commercial segments of cable television, not in a god damn movie. It's such invasive advertising that I was taken aback by the audacity of it all. There's subtlety and then there's TMNT, in which shitty brands of greasy pizza made with no love & care gets advertised as if everyone involved depended on the act for dear life. I can handle subtle product placement in small doses, but such flagrant  commercialism is absolutely toxic to children who most certainly do watch movies like this, and most of all it is truly off-putting as it brings you back to shitty reality where pizzas like this exist.

You really do have to turn off your brain if you want this movie to work. And that's how it managed to succeed. The movie would have fared a tiny bit better had the cameras not been handled in such an inept fashion, thanks to non-stop shaky cams. And the turtles look fucking scary, and their persons are crowded with all kinds of crap that does nothing for them as characters. Oh and a little less Megan Fox would not have hurt, either.

In speaking of characters, namely that of the eponymous turtles, they barely have any. Michaelangelo so far is the only one of them to have developed a character, with Donatello coming in a moderate second. We see Leo & Raph bickering with one another but speaking for myself, I don't feel it. Really it seems to be that the only character traits that even survived in this version is what role each turtle serves for the group. Yet in that regard this film is extremely late to the party anyway. As the turtles are trying to save the day they all confess things to one another, with Raph going on a bender about how in spite of his fighting with them all (kind of a lost cause as it was poorly developed in the movie), it's all because he feels weak compared to the rest of them. Then all of that is played for laughs almost immediately.

Splinter probably gets the most character development of our mutant heroes, and he kind of kicks the most ass. He takes on the Shredder all by himself, and holds his own for a short period; he's the nucleus of the group; he's played by Tony Shalhoub. Oh and he has a really bizarre looking rat-stache.

There aren't as many explosions as you may think, considering this is a Michael Bay production through & through. But like any Bay film there are a host of puerile jokes to be heard, even a racist one here and there. In one scene, the turtles are returning to their sewer hideout in the most physics-defying way seen in films in a long time, and they all dive at the same time into a hole. You guessed it if you know what happens as a result but what really nails it is the oncoming fart joke. Yep, that should please the kids plenty for this one.

I think the real deal breaker for me here is that this film doesn't have a strong identity of its own. Yeah it's certainly the most kinetic and the shiniest Turtles property to date, but on its own it is at best a mediocre effort. All that saves it are the action scenes and even they pose problems because in this new continuity there are few characters who can stand toe to toe with the turtles because of their inexplicable super-human strength. Karai shows up in the movie, and in retrospect I have no idea why as she's not a physical match for the turtles at all. Shredder had to don a suit of power armour to take them on, and because it's likely been destroyed as of his defeat, he might have to mutate himself in order to pose a threat again. And then there's the Foot, who all kept shooting at the turtles' bulletproof bodies even though it was obviously futile, and otherwise had no fighting skill at all.

A sequel is underway, probably coming out for mid-Spring, and it is apparent that a few noisy complaints have been addressed. The turtles, for instance, won't be so over-detailed and thus, hideous. The Foot clan will be ninjas again. And Casey Jones makes an appearance. On the other hand, Tyler Perry will be one of the villains and we all know how much regard he has for this medium (he has none at all).

C

The Good: 
 + The action is fun.
+ Didn't end up the way Michael Bay originally intended.
+ Splinter (at first) hands Shredder his ass. Alone.
+ It ends.
+ The sequel is fixing some of the glaring issues with this film.
+ The elevator scene reminds us why the turtles are appealing in the first place.

The Bad:
- The Shredder isn't well played. He also NEEDS power amour to fight the turtles
- Why is Kirai even in the movie? She can't do anything except shout.
- The Foot are just gun-toting idiots.
- Rips off The Amazing Spider-Man entirely with the endgame scenario.
- That Pizza Hut endorsement.
- Sometimes nauseating shaky cam. Enough with this garbage!
- Is it for kids? Adults? Teenagers? Perverted old men? I am leaning towards the latter.
- Megan Fox still can't act.
- The turtles have superhuman strength, which seemed to replace their ninja fighting skills.
- The turtles look fucking scary.  
-  Megan Fox, or April O'Neil as we have to call her, is the center of the universe. 
- Takes 25 minutes for us to finally see the turtles. 
- VERY little character development, and the turtles are reduced to just archetypes.
 

Bolling Bows Down Like a Bitch

To a COMEDIAN!

Last week, Jon Stewart, as per usual on his brilliant program (which of course has its bevy of critics and idiotic haters), skewered Fox News for its incessant attacks on the poor through use of hyperbole and outright fabrication. Eric Bolling was the guy who dared to try to attempt a retort, of sorts anyway, to Stewart's brand of comedy. In doing so, he just opened up a can of worms and ended up giving even more fodder to The Daily Show for one of their best segments in a long time. Just watch it below (this one is filtered & mirrored so as to avoid copyright infringement claims):

Given that Stewart eviscerated that hapless crowd at Fox News twice in a row on this one subject, with neither Bolling nor anyone else at that idiot show able to properly counter Stewart's delivery, one can only expect that one of them would feign surrender.

I really don't have to get into the meat of the discussion, since Stewart does that duty just fine. Also because whilst you cannot rely on Fox News to give you the full story, let alone the proper context on the subject of food stamps and the fraudulent abuse of food stamps, somehow you can rely on a comedian to give you comparatively a lot more of both. In the process, Stewart literally mops the floor and takes out the trash on every single line that Fox News tries to pound into its genuinely mentally-challenged audience's heads on this issue. The very existence of the disingenuous responses from Fox, particularly from one of their more obnoxious commentators in Eric Bolling (who is obviously the prime subject of this derisive post) would render most sane onlookers speechless, whilst it would send the comedians amongst us in to laughing fits.

As per the title, the one guy who surrender to Stewart, albeit so disgracefully and so dishonestly, would be Bolling himself. It all really makes you wonder how they manage to come back every day to carry on with surreal-quality bullshit like this. Watch him bowl not only his cajones, but his credibility, as usual, right into the fucking gutter below:

Way to go, Eric, you bowed down like the little lap dog bitch you are to a god damned COMEDIAN. Well, a ridiculously funny comedian at that. Given how pathetically inept you lot are at holding up against his rather effortless smackdowns of your garbage-heap of a 'news' network, you were out of your element just trying to taunt the guy. Next time why don't you cower under that desk of yours and spare us your phoney displays of bravado because you're only hurting yourself doing so. Or how about you continue doing so so that the collective can eventually tune out the anachronism that is your entire 'news' network from their lives.

Idiot.