Ghostbusters: Afterlife

2021, Jason Reitman (Juno) -- download

EVERYONE hated the previous Ghostbusters LeBoot movie. And by everyone, I mean the trollish subset of the Internet that still thinks girls stink and need to stay out of their treehouse. But that said, neither I nor Kent enjoyed that movie very much. It had its moments, but overall it was a waste of talent.

And THAT said, I have successfully escaped being exposed to any of the expected trolling of THIS new movie, which does the legasequel thing by both being a reboot and a sequel. BUT it replaces the Ghostbuster guys with kids. That is sure to get the hate-on, right? Or does the troll community hate kids movies less than they hate the movies with the womyns?

And this little flick does the reboot/sequel mashup thingie rather well !

Callie (Carrie Coon, The Leftovers) has to move her children Phoebe (McKenna Grace, The Handmaid's Tale) and Trevor (Finn Wolfhard, Stranger Things) out to rural Summerville, Oklahoma, to her father's place, the crazy old coot known as The Dirt Farmer, after he passes. Nobody is really happy about the move. Phoebe is just like her grandfather, a scientific genius a bit on the spectrum, while Trevor is just a typical teen trying to fit in. Callie is just not good at the adulting, which is what brought them there, and she blames it squarely on her father's shoulders, after he abandoned them to build this weird, hoarder nightmare house.

And then the kids discover that their grandfather was Egon Spengler of the original Ghostbusters; yes the team that so successfully dealt with ghosts and spirits and otherworldly entities, that by the 90s they had become more urban legend than history. Meanwhile Spengler had abandoned his family and friends, having become obsessed with the origins of the cult remnants of Gozer the Gozerian, who still wants back into our world.

Phoebe is the centre of this movie. Her curiosity leads her straight to the danger, but also straight to the resources that will save them all. She discovers her grandfather's lab, and with a bit of gentle ghost coaching, all his tools and the source of all the trouble Summerville is experiencing. Much of the ghost layer of the plot is already escaping me, which is a sort of a failure for the movie, but Grace as Phoebe stuck the most. She was just so quirky, with her terrible/great dad jokes and her immediate grasp of what is going on. Local science teacher Mr. Grooberson (Paul Rudd, Ant-Man) recognizes her value right away. It was so much fun to watch their interaction.

And yet, the ghosts played such a second-place role in this movie. Sure, the mini-marshmallow men was fun, and the sexified Gozer (played by Olivia Wilde, but voiced by Shoreh Aghdashloo) was punched up, but the rest was a nostalgic nod only. MUCH of the movie is just meant to be a nostalgic nod, because as those watching the Star Wars series on Disney+ understand, that is where the bank is now. Forget new and creative, just resurrect the old, have some fun with it, and you will shut the raving fanboyz up, and even the others will enjoy themselves, as who doesn't like nods to childhood memories.