Ghostbusters

Hello dear reader,

9724 Days, or 1389 Weeks, or 233,376 Hours, or 14,002,560 Minutes.

That’s how long the gap has been between Paul Feig’s Ghostbusters and the Ivan Reitman sequel that hit the screens back in December of 1989. Twenty seven years of trying to get the third film off the ground. Several false starts. Numerous rewrites and more drafts than you’d normally see in your average double glazing advert. So why did Columbia Pictures spend put so much time and effort into getting what would have been Ghostbusters III off the ground? The simple answer to that is money. The original that hit the screens back in 1984 was, and by some considerable distance, the year’s biggest box office draw and although the 1989 sequel wasn’t as big of a hit. It crept in at number 7 on the top 10 of the year, with Batman, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and Lethal Weapon 2, claiming the top three positions, it put enough bums on seats to get a script the green light. Now it’s one thing for a studio to want a another sequel but it’s a whole other ball game to get one made when one of the principle stars isn’t overly keen on making it. The star in question being Mr Bill Murray. Now, for those of you who don’t know much about Mr Murray when he’s not entertaining you on the silver screen or on your TV’s, Ipad’s, laptops etc, he is, shall we say, a little bit eccentric. He’s walks to the beat of his own drum and doesn’t really do things the way that others in Hollywood would consider ‘normal’. For example, he doesn’t have an agent, he has an answer phone and from time to time he’s known to listen to it. Rumour has it that when Sofia Coppola couldn’t get hold of Murray when she was trying to get Lost in Translation off the ground, she had to hire a private investigator to track him down.

So it’s safe to say that if Bill decides he doesn’t want to do something he doesn’t do it. Dan Ackroyd and the late Harold Ramis spent a long time trying to get Murray to change his mind but they never did. The closest they came was getting him to agree to it but only if his character ‘Dr Peter Venkman’ was killed off in the first act and then only appeared sparingly, throughout the rest of the film as a ghost. After about fifteen years of back and forth and several unsuccessful meetings Ackroyd, Ramis and Columbia Pictures gave up and the Ghostbusters franchise seemed to be forever languish in development hell.

Then came along Paul Feig, a man whose recent directorial efforts had shown he had a knack for making funny films. He set his stall out, made his pitch and before you could say misogyny and internet backlash he had a healthy budget to play with and marketing campaign that practically looked after itself.  The words ‘Female Reboot’ shouldn’t really be considered as dangerous. But given some of the reaction to this film, when it was announced that the four main lead characters were going to be lacking in that ‘ever so important’* Y Chromosome, you’d have thought that someone had announced that men were being rounded up in there thousands and being subjected to unspeakable horrors, like having their testosterone removed at needlepoint. I have mentioned kneejerk backlash, regarding casting decisions in previous blogs. Daniel Craig being a ‘Blonde Bond’ and Ben Afleck as Batman but the casting of four women in a comedy nearly broke the internet, at least twice.

*Sarcasm klaxon on full volume.

Melissa McCarthy, Kate McKinnon, Lesie Jones and Kristen Wiig. Four names that shouldn’t really cause that much controversy and if they’d been cast together in any other movie, assuming that also hadn’t have been another reboot of a male-centric movie in the first place, it wouldn’t have caused so much as a ripple in the fabric of movie journalism, to say nothing of the internet itself. But because of, what I hope were, a small group of Neanderthal, knuckle dragging, cockwombles (I would have used harsher language but there could be young’uns reading this) these four actresses have spent the better part of the last twelve months having to deal with trolls, and other assorted inbred, dingleberry fondler’s (still trying to keep it clean). Not to mention probably having to answer questions on it, every time they spend the day on a press junket. And you know what, every single one of them. To all the naysayers, all the ‘You’re going to ruin my childhood’ bandwagon jumper-oners and all the people out there that decided to bash this film before it was even released, I say this. GO FECK YOURSELF AND WHEN YOU’VE FINISHED FECKING YOURSELF, GO FECK YOURSELF AGAIN!

Right, I’ve climbed down off my little soapbox and I’ll now get down to the nitty gritty of why most of you are hear, my opinion of the film. Well I have good news and bad news. I’ll start with the good. It’s funny, not only that, it’s very funny. Paul Feig and fellow screenwriter Katie Dippold have come up with what at times is a laugh out loud script and I can’t remember the last time I watched one of those in a cinema. It also isn’t really based around one main lead character with the rest ridding along on the coattails of their mirth and merriment. Everyone gets an equal share of the spotlight and everyone gets to steal scenes throughout the movie. The other thing that screams funny here is Chris Hemsworth as Kevin the receptionist. If you haven’t been sold on the trailers so far and I’ll be honest, I think I fell into that category myself. The film is worth the price of admission purely on his performance. I wouldn’t want to spoil Kevin too much for you but I will say this. He has a dog called Mike Hat (say it out loud) and he has removed the lenses from his glasses because they got dirty. He’s the sort of character that would try and shoot someone with a sword, whilst shouting bang at the same time. Just think Thor with the IQ of a tennis racket and you wouldn’t be too far wide of the mark. But back to our four main leads. They are a very eclectic bunch. Kristen Wiig plays Erin Gilbert, a former friend of Melissa McCarthy’s Abby Yates, who is now trying to make a name for herself in the academia. Which is made harder when it’s brought to her attention that a book on the paranormal, that she co-wrote with Abby, is now available on Amazon. Abby has set her stall out to prove the existence of ghosts with the help of her assistant, Jillian Holtzman. Played by Kate Mckinnon, who by the way is nothing short of astoundingly brilliant. The three of them end up ‘leaving’ their respective position’s and team up to confirm and provide proof that ghosts are real. It’s whilst they are investigating the paranormal they come across Patty Tolan, a no nonsense, hardworking and  very outgoing MTA employee, played by Leslie Jones. The four of them team up and pull their resources to form…..wait for it, ‘GHOSTBUSTERS’. (Bet you didn’t see that coming did you!)

So to sum up the good news, I’ll say this. It’s fairly obvious that Ghostbusters has had a lot of time and effort spent on it. Twenty seven years to be exact. Paul Feig has done a great job in assembling a top notch cast and with the notable absence of Rick Moranis all of the original cast appear in cameo roles. Even the late and great Harold Ramis puts in a, blink and you’ll miss it, appearance as a bronze bust. There is a credit sting and as for the credits themselves, I’ll say this. If you like your Norse Gods with a bit of the Saturday Night Fever about them, you’re in for a very big treat.

Now for what I shall call the bad news. Or as I suspect some of you will say ‘Bavin, you don’t know what you’re fecking talking about’. For me the biggest let down, and there aren’t many, is the third act. The first two thirds of the film are great and I’d go so far as to say that the opening ten minutes of the film could be described in some corners of the internet, as actually scary. But for me where things go south is the last twenty five minutes or so. The villain of the piece Rowan North played by Neil Casey, stops being creepy and uncomfortable to watch and basically becomes what I would at best characterise as, the big white hype. The whole thing then rips off Poltergeist, pretty much lock stock and barrel, and has people jumping into other dimensions with cables wrapped around their waist and has more continuity errors then you can shake a class four, full roaming vapour at. On the whole though it isn’t a bad film at all. In my humble opinion I would happily sign legal documents to say that it’s a very solid four out of five stars. Columbia Pictures have a film that is not only respectful of what has come before. It’s also good enough to be considered on its own merits. If the universe is a fair and just place and judging on what politicians seem to call normal these days, it must be somewhere! Then I fully expect to see a sequel announced within six weeks of its release date. If they don’t green light a follow up film then going on previous experience it’s likely to be another twenty seven years before someone else comes along and tries a reboot again. And if that happens dear reader, I’ll be just north of seventy and to be honest, unlikely to even be able to spell Ghostbusters.

Twitter Review:

27 years in the making and only slightly overcooked in places. Funny, fresh & full on. 

#We’reReadyToBelieveYou

Useful Links:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1289401/?ref_=nv_sr_1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6hlkIlGFCI

http://www.empireonline.com/movies/ghostbusters-2016/review/