Deja Vu All Over Again... "Ghostbusters"

Ghostbusters (2016)

Rated PG-13

Starring Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon, Leslie Jones, Chris Hemsworth,

Directed by Paul Feig

The Story:

Ghosts have been sighted in Manhattan, and former paranormal believers Erin (Wiig) and Abby (McCarthy) find themselves back in each other's lives. They assemble a group of fellow "Ghostbusters" (McKinnon & Jones) and prepare to save New York from certain doom.

Well, if that sounds familiar, it should.

You've seen it before, and it was better.

However, that's the risk you run when you remake a beloved Hollywood classic.

Now, that's not to say that the original Ghostbusters movie was a cinematic masterpiece.

It was mostly a fun movie that took a science/supernatural story and injected some humor in it with a great cast that had chemistry and fun together.

So when the all-girl remake was announced, there apparently was a shrieking of fandom that what was happening was blasphemy, etc. etc.

That I don't get at all.

If you're going to put the movie on blast, wait until you see it to decide if it is good.

Or at least, wait until the trailer comes out, and then make it the most hated movie trailer in the history of the internet.

Anti-Ghostbuster fans 2...remake 0.

And really, let's be honest, the trailer(s) for Ghostbusters weren't that good.

There was little humor to be found, and it appeared that if anything funny was going to happen, it would be from McKinnon or Jones, not the main leads Wiig and McCarthy.

Which is strange.

Now having seen the movie, the trailer was right, this movie wasn't very funny.

It's like they tried too hard...or not hard enough... I still can't put my finger on it.

There were some things they did right, I absolutely loved all of the new technology McKinnon brought to the team. That was inventive and enjoyable.

However nearly all of the laughs in the film belonged to...

Chris Hemsworth.

Yep, it appeared that if the Ghostbusters movie was going to take a few shots at the men that were attacking the film prior to release, they were going to do it in film with a few pieces of dialogue peppered here and there, and then taking Hemsworth and letting him play the "ditzy blonde" stereotypical role.

Except he NAILED that role and is the most enjoyable part of the film.

His choice of playing sax or listening to sax scene is comedy gold!

So at the end of the day, it's not a horrible remake and is worth a viewing, but I don't see this one having the legs to become a celebrated treasure like the original has become.

Final Grade: C+

I'm Glad Somebody Loved It..."Romancing The Stone"

Romancing The Stone (1984)

Rated PG-13 for language

Starring Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner, Danny DeVito

Directed by Robert Zemeckis

The Story:

Joan Wilder (Turner) is a world-renowned romance novelist.  Her adventures thrill and delight audiences around the globe, and if the book can make Wilder cry, she knows she's got a hit on her hands.  When a mysterious map arrives, and her sister is kidnapped, Joan is thrust into living one of her own novels as she goes to Colombia to try and get her sister back.  It's there she runs into Jack Colton (Douglas), who embodies everything in a man that she writes about.  The duo decide to pursue the treasure on the map in the hopes of leverage to get her sister back alive.  Will her real-life adventure play out like her novels?

Another 80s classic for many, watched for the first time by yours truly.

Yep, true story!

Everything I needed to know about this film, I saw back in the day in Eddy Grant's "Romancing The Stone" music video.  So I never bothered to watch it.

So 30 years later,  Netflix offers it up for streaming, so I gave it a shot.

Meh.

:)

Again, especially with many of these 80s "classics", I find myself underwhelmed normally when I see them.  Now, plug in another fantastic movie from 1984, like Beverly Hills Cop or Ghostbusters, that I've seen over and over through the years...

Different story.

So I'm always caught in the conundrum:
Are these films not as good because I didn't see them at the time so I have fond memories?

Conversely, are my favorites from this time period only that great BECAUSE of the fond memories I have with them?

Philosophical dilemmas like this would give Socrates and Plato pause.

Now, what did Romancing the Stone bring to the table?

Robert Zemeckis directing his first feature since 1980's underrated Used Cars.  From the documentaries I've watched over the years, this seemed to be his sink or swim feature, and it led to him getting Back to the Future, so that's a plus.

Speaking of Back to the Future, when the movie opens, there is a bit of music that plays, and I swear it's from Back to the Future!  No surprise then to find Alan Silvestri the composer for this film.  Looking at his credits, this was his first real feature film break, and apparently like Spielberg and John Williams, Zemeckis and Silvestri are a dynamic duo in their own right.

As for Kathleen Turner, it kept her star rising, but it brought Michael Douglas back to cinema's forefront.  He had been floundering in a few flops previously, but this one put him back on the map, and he would go on to make some noteworthy films during the next decade.

So I'll give them credit, everything in the film was okay...

I wonder what my grade would be had this not been my first viewing?

Final Grade: C+

Rewatchability/Purchase Factor: I've gone 30 years between viewings, I think I can hold out that long again. ;)

R.I.P. Harold Ramis 1944-2014

The world became a much less amusing place Monday with the passing of Harold Ramis.

He was a triple threat in Hollywood: Writer. Director. Actor.

Of the 3, he was probably most famous, and will be remembered for his acting role(s), most notably as Dr. Egon Spengler from Ghostbusters.

However, it was likely his writing that won over most of us as fans in the first place.

Animal House, 1978

  "Ladies and gentlemen, I'll be brief. The issue here is not whether we broke a few rules, or took a few liberties with our female party guests - we did.

But you can't hold a whole fraternity responsible for the behavior of a few, sick twisted individuals. For if you do, then shouldn't we blame the whole fraternity system?

And if the whole fraternity system is guilty, then isn't this an indictment of our educational institutions in general?

I put it to you, Greg - isn't this an indictment of our entire American society?

Well, you can do whatever you want to us, but we're not going to sit here and listen to you badmouth the United States of America.

Gentlemen!"

Harold Ramis' first writing assignment for the big screen: Animal House.

If he had done nothing further with his writing career, that would be pretty impressive.

But Ramis wasn't done yet...

Meatballs, 1979

 "And even if we win, if we win, HAH! Even if we win! Even if we play so far above our heads that our noses bleed for a week to ten days; even if God in Heaven above comes down and points his hand at our side of the field; even if every man woman and child held hands together and prayed for us to win, it just wouldn't matter because all the really good looking girls would still go out with the guys from Mohawk because they've got all the money! It just doesn't matter if we win or we lose. IT JUST DOESN'T MATTER"

In 1979, Meatballs was released.  Again, Ramis was one of the writers, and he worked with Bill Murray and director Ivan Reitman for the first time.

This is an underrated classic in my opinion, and I watched this movie countless times on tv growing up.

However, sandwiched between Animal House and his next film, Meatballs often gets overlooked.

Caddyshack, 1980

  "License to kill gophers by the government of the United Nations. Man, free to kill gophers at will. To kill, you must know your enemy, and in this case my enemy is a varmint. And a varmint will never quit - ever. They're like the Viet Cong - Varmint Cong. So you have to fall back on superior intelligence and superior firepower. And that's all she wrote."

Once again, a film written by Harold Ramis, but also for the first time, he sits behind the director's chair.

How did he do?

It's in the hole!

This is the undeniable sports classic when it comes to golf, Caddyshack will live forever.

It was 1981 when I became aware of Harold Ramis, the actor...

Stripes, 1981

 "Army Training, Sir!"

10 years old, and I went to the movies with my parents and we saw Stripes.

Yes, I have awesome parents.

While much of the movie may have soared over my head at the time, the premise of the story was straightforward enough, and the acting and writing were, and still are, hilarious.

This was the 2nd time that Ramis, Murray and Reitman worked together.

Even more successful than their first outing, but nothing would prepare them for what came next when they all worked together.

However, it was time for Ramis to direct his 2nd feature film before that happened...

National Lampoon's Vacation, 1983

No Bill Murray this time, but he did call upon a Caddyshack alumni to lead as Clark Griswold.  This movie still holds up well after all these years, and is only overshadowed by Christmas Vacation thanks to the annual replayability during the holidays.


Then, the phenomenon happened, and thanks to the title song, lives to this day thanks to 80s radio airplay...

Ghostbusters, 1984

"We're ready to believe you!"

Once again, Ramis writes for Murray and directed by Reitman.

Easily the biggest hit of their careers, and a movie that is still great, 30 years later.

Sadly, the much rumored Part 3 won't happen now.

Fast forward to 1993, and Ramis and Murray teamed together one last time, and created a masterpiece...

Groundhog Day, 1993

"This is pitiful. A thousand people freezing their butts off waiting to worship a rat. What a hype. Groundhog Day used to mean something in this town. They used to pull the hog out, and they used to eat it. You're hypocrites, all of you!"

Written and directed by Ramis, and starring Bill Murray, this was their last collaboration together.

The movie is cinematic genius, partly due to Murray's delivery, but Ramis' direction is effortless and his writing is as crisp and sharp as it ever was.

I will cap off Ramis' career with one last film (even though it had a sequel...)

Analyze This, 1999

"I wasn't really gonna whack you."

"Paul..."

"Okay, I was gonna whack you. But I was real conflicted about it."

Harold Ramis wrote and directed Analyze This starring Billy Crystal and Robert DeNiro.

It's brave enough to write a comedy and have it star Billy Crystal, who is already hilarious.

But they took DeNiro and gave him a sense of humor.

And it worked!


The low points to Harold Ramis' career are really inconsequential.

He left us with a legacy of work that, at least for me, makes him one of unquestioned great cinematic comic minds of the late 20th Century.

I will miss his further contributions to film.

I will cherish those memories he gave us.


R.I.P.

No Rest For the Weary..."R.I.P.D."

When there's something strange...

In your neighborhood...

Who ya gonna call?

The Story:

Nick (Ryan Reynolds) is a cop who gets killed by his partner (Kevin Bacon).  Suddenly he finds himself landing a new gig in the Rest in Peace Department.  He is teamed with Roy (Jeff Bridges), a wild west lawman who's been doing this for years, but hates having partners.  Too bad, so sad, because the boys are going to have to learn to work together, and fast, if they want to prevent the impending apocalypse!

So, why does everyone hate this movie?

I don't know.

The trailers made it look like Ghostbusters meets Men in Black.

Mission accomplished.

The premise is fun: the dead that refuse to leave this world are hunted by the spirit world's best cops. 

It's a supernatural buddy cop film!

The cops of course look different to us humans: Nick is a Chinese man (James Hong) and Roy is a woman (Marisa Miller).  The effect is used to amusing potential throughout the movie.

However, therein lies the problem with a film with so much promise to its premise.  There was a lot of great potential to this story to live up to Ghostbusters or Men in Black...

And it never quite makes it.

It's fun, but not FUN! It's good, but not GREAT!

When you aim to be an amalgam of two science fiction/comedy classics, you've got to pull out all of the stops and not just rely on upgraded special effects to wow the audiences.

That said, the leading men, especially Bridges though, seem to enjoy what they are doing and give a fun performance as lawmen from the other side of the pearly gates.  Reynolds is shoehorned into the straight man role, and maybe that's part of the problem.

His mouth and sarcastic wit are his selling points, and when you have him playing the straight man reacting to the new crazy world that he's thrust into, he doesn't get to react as cleverly as he should, or at least, as audiences expect him too.

While it's not the greatest movie of the year, it is nowhere near the worst movie ever to grace the multiplex as many people seemed to think this year.

It's a movie with unrealized potential that could have been much better, but the bar maybe was set too high going into it.

The trailer told us too much, and made the comparisons inevitable.

Sometimes less is more, that would have been good advice for the trailer.

Sometimes less is less.  That might just sum up the movie.

Final Grade: C+ish

Rewatchability/Purchase Factor: I picked it up from Blockbuster sight unseen, not having done that in ages.  Don't regret the purchase, just wish there had been more for me to like.

100 Greatest Movies of All Time...That I Own. # 65 ~ Ghostbusters

Who you gonna call?

Ghostbusters!

The all Ivan Reitman weekend concludes with arguably his best movie, Ghostbusters.

Once again, Harold Ramis is behind the scenes as one of the writers on this project, and he teams onscreen with Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd as the unlikely trio of paranormal investigators, Dr. Venkman, Stantz and Spengler.

Of course, it's hard to be taken seriously as ghost hunters if there are no ghosts, but luckily for these guys, New York is suddenly swimming in them.

Cue the addition of Sigourney Weaver and Rick Moranis to lend their talents to the movie.  Suddenly, it's not just some random ghosts that the boys are trying to catch, but they need to stop a full-fledged invasion from beyond!

Will they succeed?  Probably...since there was a Ghostbusters II...

However, better than that was the cartoon.  It was pretty awesome. : )

This movie is just plain fun from start to finish.  It's a great one to break the kids on to start showing them "scary movies".  They call them "baby steps" for a reason.  Gotta start small!

I have to admit, I am curious to see what they will end up doing with the rumored 3rd installment of the franchise.  The Next Generation?  Hmmm.  If they get the right cast, it can probably work.  But going off the original, you've got to have a great story and quality cast, otherwise...

Meh.