Review: Ghostbusters (2016 / second-pass)

Ghostbusters (2016 / second-pass / 3D / SPOILERS)
Cert: 12A / 116 mins / Dir. Paul Feig / Trailer


Okay, after watching the 2016 iteration of Ghostbusters again, I find I don't have that much to add to my first review. It's certainly not that I enjoyed the movie any less the second time around but for obvious reasons, familiarity with the story and the script takes the shine off the majority of one-liners and witticisms which made the film so pleasantly surprising on the opening night.

And if I'm being honest, re-watching the film only serves to underline a couple of gripes. While I'd remarked that the screenplay takes a while to click into gear, it turns out that precise moment is when Patty officially joins 'the gang' and the four characters start working seamlessly together, instead of slightly-unconvincingly edging around each other. The film instantly goes from not bad to great at that point, and with performers this comfortable in each other's space, that's got to come down to the writing.

And the film's bad guy, Rowan. Has he really been able to manufacture a bunch of psychic-amplifier bombs to tear a hole in reality after reading a single textbook on the paranormal (which, given its age in the movie, won't have anywhere near the level of technical or theoretical detail that the actual Ghostbusters are later using) and still harbouring an unresolved complex over being bullied when he was younger? Because that'd be bland as a plot-device alone, never mind the entire setup for the film's antagonist. Almost as insulting as the climax of the movie being resolved by the portable nuclear-reactor, Ecto-1, being driven into a dimensional-portal in order to seal it, but by Slimer, rather than any of the actual heroes, and accidentally as the heroes didn't really engineer it. Still, at least the subsequentally-destroyed Times Square is magically restored to its former state for reasons which aren't even hinted at, never mind exposited.

Seriously though, never mind all that. The film's great.

Oh, and how come Abby and Erin's hair turns white, but their eyebrows don't?

I'm just going to come out and say it: Men in Black and RIPD.
Neither are particularly great movies, but if you enjoyed them, you'll love Ghostbusters.



You should.



It does. Not always as effortlessly as it'd like, but it does.



Quite possibly



Probably not.



Didn't hear one, no.



Level 2: Well, Ed Begley Jr's in this movie, and he appeared in a couple of episodes of the TV series Outlaw along with Jimmy 'Bail Organa' Smits.







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