Ghostbusters: Afterlife- Movie Review
Directed by: Jason Reitman
Starring: Mckenna Grace, Finn Wolfhard, Paul Rudd, Carrie Coon
Hey, spy kids, you have competition! Here comes the Ghostbuster Kids…
How long is the Reitman family going to squeeze juice from this, almost 40 year old, success. After the original, there was Ghoostbusters 2, which was a total flop. Then the all female version flopped. And now a kid’s version!!! It’s too much. What’s next, a cats and dogs version??
But if you are ranking everything after the original, Ghostbusters: Afterlife can easily take the top spot. Yes, it is true that the competition is miserable, but to be on the top among the flops is still some kind of an achievement: the best of the worst!
Another good thing is that the ghostbusting action has been moved from urban New York City to rural Oklahoma. Now, is there any symbolism up for discussion here? Maybe.. In any case, it looks like the big evil called Gozer and his buddies Key Master and Gatekeeper will not be polluting the big city anymore and will be permanently buried far, far away in the flat lands of Oklahoma.
The teenagers in Ghostbusters: Afterlife are the grandkids of one of the originals, scientist Egon Spengler. Apparently, after golden buster years the originals all split apart and Spangler was the one who grabbed all the Ghostbusters equipment, left the family, friends and everything else behind him, moving to a lone corner of the world, Summerville Oklahoma where he occupied a piece of land and built a farm. But, that was just a front, underneath the farm there was a hidden science hub where he masterminded one hell of a plan: put in place a giant trap field containing hundreds of single ghost traps. The final sequence of the plan would be to attract the big evil Gozer and his associates to the spot, then to cross the streams and force them all down underground forever. Unfortunately, he did not live long enough to complete the plan, but here’s where the new Buster generation comes in to help.
In the final busting scenes, there is a cameo from the original Ghostbusters, including a digitally generated recreation of Harold Ramis. A sweet in memoriam for the only one missing from the original cast. Don’t forget that he was, together with Dan Akroyd, the creator of the whole Ghostbusters idea.
Among the cast of the movie is also Pual Rudd. Recently he is everywhere. You open a tuna can nowadays and you’re likely to find Paul Rudd inside. He is here, he is People Magazine’s sexiest man alive, he is a cruel shrink in a TV show, he is everywhere. Paul is a funny guy. But too much of anything is simply too much.
Go watch this movie now. Ghostbusters: Afterlife is a movie for audiences not for critics.
