'Ghostbusters: Afterlife' finally resurrects franchise

The last time we got an attempted big-screen resurrection of the "Ghostbusters" franchise, back in 2016, online trolls started review-bombing it for sexist reasons before the film even premiered in theaters, because director Paul Feig had the temerity to cast all four members of the team as women.

This was unfair and unhelpful, because while the film did not deserve such abuse, neither was it actually any good, but the online trolls undermined their own cause by ensuring any substantive criticisms of the film's slipshod script or lifelessly gratuitous gags would be lumped in with the sexist howlings of review-bombers.

Which makes 2021's "Ghostbusters: Afterlife" all the more remarkable for the depth of love it appears to have awakened in all corners of online fandom, while it's now the relatively credible and sober critics who seem to be seething with an almost visceral contempt that this film even exists.

If I'm reading those reviewers right, the consensus view of the cognoscenti is that the original 1984 "Ghostbusters" was a memorably well-executed comedy, in the spirit of the "Reagan Eighties," and brought to life by alumni of "Saturday Night Live" and "Second City Television," whose cynical slacker ethos was betrayed by becoming too non-ironically popular with generations of younger moviegoers who were arguably too young to appreciate its anti-bureaucratic satire.

Even when Paul Feig rebooted "Ghostbusters" as an explicitly feminist empowerment narrative, he clearly shared this view of what made the original film work, by treating it as a broad comedy with flashy (and expensive) bits of sci-fi stuck to its chassis, mostly for ornamentation.

This is wrong. Remove all of the jokes from the original "Ghostbusters" film, and you're still left with an entirely solid science-fiction epic about the supernatural manifesting in major ways in a major contemporary American metropolis.

And for those who have long argued that 1984's "Ghostbusters" is too shamelessly jaded to be updated for the more earnest sensibilities of the modern era, "Ghostbusters: Afterlife" recognizes that it was never a forced quota of one-liners per minute, nor even the extravagance of the special effects on display, that made the original "Ghostbusters" a generational touchstone.

Rather, it was the original film's appealingly authentic characters, whose humor flowed naturally from their outsized personalities and lived-in environments, who made the whole admittedly absurd exercise work.

Before what would become the Marvel Cinematic Universe made its debut with "Iron Man" in 2008, "Ghostbusters" had already set the template for it in 1984, with a distinctively quirky ensemble lineup of heroes who managed to take strange threats super-seriously even as they commented upon those scenarios' amusing aspects.

To deliver a new generation of engaging, relatable and likable heroes, director Jason Reitman (son of original "Ghostbusters" director Ivan Reitman) populates "Ghostbusters: Afterlife" with a surprisingly charismatic crew of school-aged kids - I expected that giving one the nickname "Podcast" would set my teeth on edge, but Logan Kim animates him with a weirdness that feels too real to be pandering - with resonant connections to the original team.

Finn Wolfhard of "Stranger Things" and Marvel "Ant-Man" Paul Rudd both continue to be effortlessly talented and effective, regardless of their roles, but the real breakout star is young Mckenna Grace, whom everyone has guessed from the trailers by now is the geeky genius tween granddaughter of Egon Spengler, played by 1984 "Ghostbusters" screenplay co-writer Harold Ramis, who passed away in 2014.

Instead of trying to make the original Ghostbusters team work in Egon's absence, "Ghostbusters: Afterlife" is a loving tribute to all the ways in which it simply doesn't work without Egon, or at the very least, without a Spengler, which is where Mckenna Grace's performance as Phoebe Spengler stands out, because she recreates all of Egon's most defining mannerisms so well, without any self-conscious affect, that it's uncanny.

This girl is the new heart and soul of the Ghostbusters, and this film belongs to the new crew she happens to gather around her, but don't worry, the OG Ghostbusters still play a key part in the suitably rousing doomsday climax, which features the return of a few familiar scary faces (and some silly ones as well, with packs of tiny Stay-Puft Marshmallow Men running riot through a Walmart at one point).

I smiled with the return of every member of the 1984 cast, especially when Ernie Hudson's Winston Zeddemore finally got the respect he's earned, nearly four decades later, but I was not prepared for the gut-punch of this film's most emotional moment.

I won't spoil it, but you'll know it when you see it, and you'll understand why so many middle-aged men are walking out of the theaters showing "Ghostbusters: Afterlife" with tears in their eyes and lumps in their throats.

Remember when Luke Skywalker showed up to save the day in the second-season finale of "The Mandalorian"? That's the moment that "Ghostbusters: Afterlife" replicates in the end, bringing two generations of heroes together, and allowing us "Ghostbusters" fans to say goodbye to Harold Ramis in a way that he deserved.

And while this film may have been made for all of us adults who grew up as kids with all the "Ghostbusters" toys, cartoons and Hi-C packs of Ecto Cooler that followed the first film, "Ghostbusters: Afterlife" is also a gift to our generation's kids, so that nerdy little girls can see themselves in these fantastic stories, and feel as proud to be unabashedly dorky as all of us boys who dressed up as Ray, Peter, Egon and Winston back in the Eighties.

Because that's the beauty of it. Much like anyone can be an Avenger if Captain America calls them up to stand alongside him, the moment Bill Murray introduces himself to you as Peter Venkman, "from the New York home office," that's it. You've just been deputized. You're officially a Ghostbuster now.

What's the line? "I'm not crying, you're crying."

Author Bio

Kirk Boxleitner, Reporter

Shelton-Mason County Journal & Belfair Herald
[email protected]