We just watched Ghostbusters Afterlife and man I have so many thoughts lol SPOILERS AHEAD!!
I love the nostalgia, the use of the old music themes and cues are spot on. This whole movie only works because of nostalgia. I think that’s because the characters aren’t as likable as the original movies — it’s partially because we’re dealing with kids instead of adults and honestly, this makes so much of this movie absolutely more ridiculous than I expected it to be. Kids just aren’t this..uhhh…self sufficient? Making of the decisions that don’t get you killed? Lol. I mean, when the OG crew destroys half of Manhattan, we understand why they do it and that there probably wasn’t another option and they do it knowing they are going to have to deal with the consequences. When the kids go on a car chase after a ghost and destroy half of the downtown of this city, uh, I have a lot of questions haha. They even get arrested and one of the kids pulls the proton pack on the local non-ghost sheriff, which was a “whoa” for me because we’d had a demonstration of what the proton packs do to regular objects, so it was a lot.
I like the idea of Egon’s grandchildren having his intelligence and technological prowess, though I find the boy, Trevor, much less believable than the girl, Phoebe. I was surprised when they showed him working on a car. The mom is kind of a shoehorn into the series, she hates science because she was abandoned by her father, Egon, so I mean, the movie could have happened without her. There is a nice scene where the mom finds out Egon cared about her…well until the Gatekeeper gets her lol.
Paul Rudd is hilarious to watch. He plays a…dude bro scientist. He’s pretty dumb lol, but his scene with the Keymaster dog is such a callback to the original movie, it was great.
The best scenes are all nostalgia scenes honestly lol.
The one thing I could not get over was the absolute lack of care this whole town of people show to ghosts showing up. I mean, I yelled “That’s a no for me dawg” so many times in this film. People watched ghost stuff happen and while the whole New York events were real, it’s obvious the whole world doesn’t recall it as a whole “ghosts are real” thing. But seriously, most people just stood around and had very underwhelming reactions lol. And Phoebe and her friend Podcast literally have no problems going into dumb situations. They aren’t really trying to prove out theories (like the OG cast), they are just being dumb kids with really powerful equipment.
SERIOUSLY YA’LL PLEASE RUN INSTEAD OF ACTING LIKE THIS IS NORMAL.
The best part of this movie is the ending cameos. Hands down, that is the best part of this film, with the homage to Harold Ramis’ character of Egon, the great lines from the OGs and the looks the guys give when they see Egon again LOLOLOLOLOLOL
Ghostbusters was great because of the actors and the characters and their style of comedy. You can’t make a great Ghostbusters film without it. That’s why when the OG cast showed up, the movie immediately got really good. The directing is good, it’s more just how the actors play the roles they were given. I needed to really like the new characters and honestly, only Phoebe and Podcast got real character development and we got a sense of them. This is a movie where over the top acting is kind of a must.
