Ghostbusters: Answer the Call (2016) and Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021) Reviews

The Increasingly Bad Attempts To Make Ghostbusters A Franchise

This is still an impossibly hard movie to parse and dissect the quality of, much less the legacy of. Not because of the chuds who marched against it when the film was released. Nobody cares about them anymore.

Rather this is so hard to figure out because it’s at once a fun attempt to be its own Ghostbusters movie, but on the other it’s a massive fart anytime they make an overt reference to the original movies, or drag in all the cast members for some reason. It’s at once a Paul Feig movie, but also a movie Sony forced their hand in.

It’s both much funnier than I remembered, but when the jokes fail, they fail wildly. Which all leads to the film feeling frustratingly hit and miss for the entire runtime, and therefore completely maddening it’s not better.

It’s not a franchise-ruiner because as I’ve said before, the OG “Ghostbusters” is far from perfect, and “Ghostbusters II” was a mess in its own right. That film is only slightly better than this, because its funniest parts are a lot more prominent than Kate McKinnon being funny here, who is mostly on the side of this movie..

By the way, I expect “Ghostbusters Afterlife” to fully continue the downward trend, but this time making me actively angry, as they drag out the original cast once again, make it about the Spengler legacy, and probably make Paul Rudd the baby from the second movie, or some shit. It’s a Jason Reitman movie. All manner of potential stupidity is in the table.

That being said, fuck you Coronavirus for delaying it for the foreseeable future.

Also, I think the definitive version of this movie is the Extended Edition because it has a lot better jokes than the theatrical cut, and weirdly adds back in a lot more characters they cut out. That being said, the Chris Hemsworth “You Should Be Dancing” scene they added back in continues to be one of the cringiest scenes I’ve seen in a modern movie the past decade. What in the absolute fuck were they thinking that day.

2.5/5 Stars

⭐️⭐️✨

God, this remains such a frustrating film, because on the one hand it is a funny enough comedy. After all, a Ghostbusters film should, first and foremost, be a comedy. But then on the other hand, this is so poorly written and constructed, that everybody feels way in over their heads in making it, especially Feig.

The R-rating of Feig’s usual comedies is sorely missed here, and he is simply not that competent a director. Now “Spy” is one of my favorite comedies period, but in that film, Feig and company feel like they have a handle on the material at all times. Whereas with this movie, never for a moment does it feel like anybody has a handle on anything.

Also, I just know I’m going to hate Afterlife because Jason Reitman is an even worse director, and the reverence to the franchise is off the charts in that film, but it fucking sucks when implemented here. Just fucking garbage. Middle fingers to the screen fucking garbage. Everything with the logo, all the old cast members being given awful shit to do, and that post-credits scene. Fucking hell that post-credits scene.

Now I realize Feig probably had little to do with that shit needless winking being inserted, but he also has nobody to blame but himself. Feig is the one that ballooned the budget to unsustainable levels, where it was destined to fail. He could and should have made a smaller scale movie.

Instead this costs as much as a Marvel movie, which allowed Sony to stick its grubby hands in, and fuck things up further, because they had so much invested. And of course, it didn’t make its money back, because they had invested so much, setting themselves up to fail.

This movie and ‘Afterlife’ made very similar amounts of money, but one’s a failure, and one’s a success because Reitman kept the budget relatively small, so it could make its money back. To put it lightly, mistakes were made with this film.

2/5 Stars

⭐️⭐️

Currently Ranked:

#6/#9 in “Paul Feig, Ranked”

For almost fifteen years, Jason Reitman was one of the most successful directors of adult dramas in Hollywood. Like his Dad Ivan, Jason was a pretty unusual, but talented comedy director. Unlike his Dad though, Jason’s work tended to be much more serious, and less silly.

Jason was rewarded for this too, as his first three films from 2005-2009, “Thank You for Smoking,” “Juno” and “Up in the Air” were increasingly critically praised, mature works, that especially in the case of “Juno,” also became cultural phenomenons. Was Reitman the new great director, who was destined to win an Oscar in the next decade?

Well, he certainly got enough chances, making five films during the decade, all of which were adult dramas, with comedic elements at most. But none of them hit in quite the same way. Far from being cultural phenomenons, the most these movies ever grossed was $16 million in total. That could be fine depending on the budgets, but almost every one of the films ended up being a box office bomb.

Reitman also never got close to winning an Oscar again, as several of the films he made that decade were critically reviled, and for good reason. Most of them sucked, and sucked hard. After “The Front Runner” came out to poor reviews, an even worse box office and no Oscar buzz, it seems like Reitman’s Blank Check had finally been taken away.

He got away with making more mature adult dramas and comedies for fifteen years, in a Hollywood landscape where those are increasingly rare, and he blew it. Suddenly if Reitman ever wanted to direct again, he would have to get into the franchise business, even if he was kicking and screaming.

Naturally, being a nepo baby of the director of the original “Ghostbusters,” and even making a cameo in “Ghostbusters II” where he tells the Ghostbusters they suck, Jason Reitman got into the family business.

It’s kind of pathetic if you think about this whole arc here. In ten years, he had gone from Oscar contender, to being forced to defile the corpse of his father’s franchise.

Some people held out hope that the Reitman child would be able to elevate the film, since he used to be a good director. I, however, was skeptical. Turns out I was completely right to be skeptical too, because this film was even worse than I expected.

I already wasn’t enjoying the forced template of turning the Ghostbusters into “Stranger Things,” but then when the Harold Ramis ghost shows up at the end? Fuuuuuuuuucckkkkk yoooooouuu, Jason Reitman. The movie wasn’t great until that point, but that reveal just sealed the deal for me. Jesus fucking Christ.

It’s a “Ready Player One” situation when Spielberg did Kubrick’s “The Shining,” where it’s supposed to a tribute to somebody the Director ostensibly loves, but is written and executed like the Director fucking hated him.

How else do you explain why they wrote Egon to be a deadbeat dad and bad friend, unless Harold Ramis pissed in Reitman’s cornflakes as a kid. Like, what the actual fuck man? The fuck are we even doing here? It’s a Ghostbusters movie with no fucking jokes!

1/5 Stars

⭐️

Currently Ranked:

#9 in “The Worst Movies of 2021”