ANCC: Ghostbusters

Who you gonna call?  Nick, the Gorehound, and…..Jennifer??? In an episode that will forever change the All-New Culture Cast, a new host is introduced and they discuss Ghostbusters…the entire franchise.  From the original 1984 classic to the recent reboot and the return of Ecto-Cooler!  There is a lot to cover in this supersized episode, so grab your stick and heat it up!

Also featuring a cameo from Thor of Thor’s Hour of Thunder!

To listen to the episode, click here or on the image below!

Also be sure to check out:

Nick’s review of Ghostbusters (2016)
Nick’s review of Ghostbusters: The Return
Nick’s take on the controversy surrounding the new Ghostbusters film
Zack’s disappointment with Ghostbusters II
Nick’s look at the LEGO Ghostbuster Firehouse

Ghostbusters – The Nick Review

Thanks to some random luck while bumbling around the internet, I was able to score tickets to see an advance screening of the new Ghostbusters movie tonight.  The film has been incredibly controversial since it was originally announced mostly due to the gender-flipped leads and the fact that it is a remake of a classic and beloved film.  In the latter’s case, I can understand the resistance even if I didn’t share it.

Let me establish this: the 1984 original is my favorite film of all time.  I have seen that so many times, the movie is tattooed in my mind. Ghostbusters 2, while I like for nostalgic purposes, I find to be kinda terrible.  It has its moments, but it is such a lazy retread.  I also watched a lot of The Real Ghostbusters cartoon, had a bunch of toys, and drank an unhealthy amount of Ecto-Cooler.  Point being, I grew up with Ghostbusters.  It is part of who I am and, in some small ways, the films informed my development.

With that in mind, how did I find Paul Feig’s Ghostbusters?  I really enjoyed it.  I truly did.  The film is incredibly worthy of bearing the Ghostbusters name.  It is funny throughout and legitimately scary at times.  I found it incredibly refreshing that, beyond some broad strokes, it doesn’t retell the same story from the 1984 original.  It mostly does its own thing.

The writing is to be commended (mostly).  I really got a good sense of balance between the four ghostbusters as they met and developed their friendship throughout the film, which is really what this film is ultimately about.  It provided a good, emotional arc to be invested in, while, at the same time, doing some nice (but not in-your-face) world building.  I guess, what I want to say is that the narrative was balanced very well.

I said mostly above, because there are some inconsistencies within the film, mainly revolving around the  tech.  At some points, the tech just holds the ghosts (as in the original films) and other times it disintegrates them.  I think I understand this seeming inconsistency, but a little bit more explanation would have helped out a lot in this regard to make certain sequences fully work.

I should mention that Ghostbusters is a very different kind of comedy than the original film.  The original’s comedy was very dry, sarcastic, and slow burning.  This one is a little more broad and silly (yet still grounded), but it works to the film’s strength.  And having different styles of comedy is okay.  The original was lightning in a bottle and to try to replicate that in today’s world would have been a horrible misstep.  Feig brought his own directing style to the film and it works to the film’s benefit.

Ghostbusters was very well cast, but Chris Hemsworth as dim-witted Kevin and Kate McKinnon as the eccentric Holtzman steal the show.  They are just so charmingly goofy throughout the film.  I hope McKinnon’s career explodes in the near future, and I would love to see Hemsworth do more straight-up comedy.  Beyond that, the cast just gels very well together.  As characters, you like them and want to see them succeed.

Not everything works in the film.  There are times that the movie is a bit too reverential to the original, particularly in regards to the cameos.  Some of the cameos just took me straight out of the film.  Particularly Bill Murray’s extended, gratuitous cameo just kills the story’s momentum and served no purpose other than to give Bill Murray an extended cameo (see Zombieland for a further example).

And, the less said about the awkward Ozzie Osbourne cameo, the better.

Also, the film’s pace just grinds during the second act.  Not sure what exactly happened during editing, but the film starts and ends strong with things moving quickly, but once the aforementioned Bill Murray cameo comes, it takes a bit before the film finds its footing again.

Is Ghostbusters as good as the original?  No.  I might be biased, but the original is a classic that may never be topped.  Is it a good film on its own merits? Absolutely!  The few problems that I had with the film didn’t sour me on it.  It is a genuinely fun and (more importantly) funny film.   I recommend it.

~N

Ghostbusters, Misogyny, and the General Idiocracy of the Internet

I hate the internet.  So many assholes.  I am anticipating the new Ghostbusters movie.  I love Ghostbusters, and this is my most anticipated film of the year.  So much so, that I was able to score advance screening tickets for Wednesday.  But, damn, the internet sucks.  And everyone is an idiot but me.

Can’t people see what they are doing?  When this film was first announced,  there was a very large sexist backlash because director Paul Feig decided to cast women in the title roles.  Some simply didn’t like the idea of a reboot, but the loudest were complaining about girls being Ghostbusters.

Oh no!  Gender swap!

Now, I know what you are thinking.  They are not being sexist!  They are simply voicing their displeasure of not liking what the movie is doing.  Sure, you can claim that now, but then when nothing was known other than it was going to be female-driven, you can’t make that claim.

People claimed that having women was a gimmick.  I don’t see how, but if it is, so what?  It’s brilliant.  Not only does it do something different, but it sidesteps the potential problem of recasting the iconic roles.  It was a very smart way to go.

People were also complaining on the internet about how a female Ghostbusters movie wouldn’t work to which they couldn’t explain how.  At the same time, they claimed they were not being sexist, but it is hard to believe that when they refer to the movie with some variation of “Ghost bitches”.

People were just nonsensically hostile for every little thing to the point that director Paul Feig snapped back at the trolls.  Perhaps not the most professional thing to do, but I don’t blame him one bit.  One Twitter user robcassidy84 dedicated most, if not all, of his account to bitching about the new movie.  Can anything be sadder?  If I didn’t like something, I wouldn’t dedicate my life to shitting on it.  I have better things to do.

There was also the rumor of a male Ghostbusters movie coming out starring Channing Tatum and Chris Pratt.  Nothing came from this, but people were already championing this saying it was going to be better than the Feig film even though nothing was known about the movie other than the leads were male.  No story, no character description, no sense of what plot.  Nothing.  If that isn’t sexism, I don’t know what is.

So we’ve established that people were acting like sexist assholes and were afraid that girls were going to take away boy things (even though Ghostbusters was never a male-specific movie).  During this time as well, social justice warriors slowly began to crop out to counter the misogynists.

Now is where things get really stupid.

The first trailer hit and was a disappointment.  Even star Melissa McCarthy expressed her dissatisfaction with it.  Audiences were left with a collective “meh” about it.  Any anyone who had a legitimate criticism was faced with a huge smack down by any and all SJW.  Even when the criticism had nothing to do with women being ghostbusters.

For example, the Angry Video Game Nerd’s video critique of his disappointment with a reboot and received an insane the backlash for that.  I disagreed with much of what he said in his video and laugh at his hypocritical stance (he wants people to stop supporting reboots, but then goes to see the new Ninja Turtles movie a few weeks later), but not once did he even mention that the leads are women.

For fuck’s sake.  Do they not know what they are doing?

Since the SJW defense got comically over the top, a backlash happened against them.  People would mock others for minor criticisms.  Slowly, the SJW’s defense began to be more and more dismissed and taken seriously.

Now, you have the sexist assholes hiding underneath this blanket of legit criticism and “ironic sexism”.  And I hate this for so many reasons.  Yes, there are legit criticisms that people can make, but people need to not see that as some sort of sexist attack.  What it does is that it allows the real sexist misogynist to get away with being sexists.

In essence, they can get away with it now.  Why does everything on the internet have to go to such extremes?

This is why we can’t have nice things.  I absolutely hate it that we live in 2016 and casual sexism like this still exists.  Why should it matter if Ghostbusters are women or not?  And, on the other hand, why do we need to live in a knee-jerk society that people will attack you for things you didn’t even say or suggest.

It is really depressing since this is only a movie – a piece of entertainment.  Not a reason to get bent out of shape about.

If the new movie is indeed good, then it will serve as a nice companion piece to the original.  If it is bad, it will fade into the background.  Whatever the case may be, it’s legacy (before release) will always be marred by some really sad sexist people and really sad people attempting to confront the sexist people making things unnecessarily worse in the process.

~N

The Summer 2013 Movie Trends Podcast

This week, Zack and Nick take an unusual diversion and talk about some of the recent trends, topics, and reactions to recently-released Hollywood fare such as The Heat, Grown Ups 2, and Pacific Rim. What will they have to say about the varied reactions critics and audiences have had to these movies? Listen and find out!

Click HERE or on the image to listen to the podcast.

 And as always, click HERE to follow us on iTunes!

-Z-

‘Identity Thief’ Stole My Time

Identity Thief, starring Jason Bateman and Melissa McCarthy, is not a good movie.  However, it is not a bad one either.  It is an incredibly average one.  Bateman and McCarthy really give it their all, but nothing quite comes together in the end, and the two comedic actors just cannot rise above the material.

The major problem with Identity Thief is that it tries too hard and never quite knows what it really wants to be.  The trailer highlighted a lot of the slapstick, but if people were going in preparing to see multiple pratfalls and our two leads beating the hell out of each other, they are in a world of disappointment.   Is it slapstick?  Is it a buddy film?  Is it a gross-out comedy?  A road-trip film?  It tries to be all of these things, and the movie feels disjointed because of it.

One of the major issues I had with the movie is the central conceit of the film.  In it we learn the McCarthy has stolen Bateman’s identity and starts running up charges in his name.  Naturally, collection agencies, the cops, and others come looking for him.  Bateman, of course, is clueless, but everyone refuses to listen to him (let alone letting him get a word in edgewise).  I refuse to believe in a world where identity theft is an all-too-common occurrence that the police would not bother to look if Bateman is telling the truth.  Not helping matters is that Bateman acts as if he is completely helpless.  Since all the fake credit cards are in his name, cannot he just cancel them all and report them as fraud to the credit companies?  The movie acts as if this is not an option.

I know I am being nitpicky.  Without any of this happening, there would not be a movie.  However, I generally have a rule: if movie logic cannot trump common sense logic, then the movie’s premise fails.  That is the case with Identity Thief.

But that is far from the flick’s only problem.  There are several subplots which quickly go nowhere.  Apparently McCarthy is being chased by a bounty hunter (wonderfully played by Robert Patrick) and two hitmen.  These storylines wrap up anti-climatically and is forgotten about by the time we get to the third act.  It makes me wonder what the point of it was.

Also hurting the movie is that the pace is so incredibly slow.  This is surprising as Seth Gordon generally has proven himself as a capable comedy director with 2011’s hilarious Horrible Bosses (also starring Jason Bateman).  While the narrative might not have been all that great, I would have at least expected the film to not feel like such a drag.

The film was also very mean-spirited.  I do not mind dark or twisted humor, but Identity Thief just got too nasty for its own good.  It was amusing at first, but the film just continues with it to the point that it is really hard to have any sympathy for these characters.

To the film’s credit, Bateman and McCarthy play off each other wonderfully and have a great chemistry.  I would not mind seeing them team-up again down the line in a, hopefully, better movie.

I honestly cannot recommend Identity Thief.  There was so much potential here, but it does not work in the end.  The movie is slow and utterly predictable (honestly – you can figure out exactly what was going to happen after the first fifteen minutes).  There are some funny moments, but just wait for the Redbox.

~N