Ghostbuster Afterlife

So, we finally get round to seeing the new Ghostbuster movie, the real new Ghostbuster movie, not like the previous remake for remake sake one.

This one comes from writer and director Jason Reitman (“Up in the Air”, “Thank You for Smoking”) son, of course, of Ivan Reitman, director of the original 1984 Ghostbusters movie and the 1989 sequel.

Ghostbusters Afterlife sees Phoebe, Mckenna Grace (“Young Sheldon (TV)”, “Captain Marvel”), Trevor, Finn Wolfhard (“Stranger Things (TV)”, “IT”), and mom Callie, Carrie Coon (“Avengers: Endgame”, “Fargo (TV)”), inherit Egon Spengler’s (Harold Ramis) farmhouse after his death.

This is both lucky and not. Lucky, because they had just been evicted from their home, not so lucky because Callie didn’t know her father and the kids didn’t know their grandfather as he was never around. That and the farm doesn’t grow anything, known as ‘dirt’ farm by the locals, and there’s lots of debts, as Callie learns from Janine Melnitz, Annie Potts (“Young Sheldon (TV)”, “Toy Story 4”).

In fact, what Spengler was up to becomes apparent as Phoebe begins to discover her grandfather’s work, with some help from Spengler’s ghost, and finds the proton packs, hand held ghost locator and much, much more, whilst Trevor finds Ecto 1.

This is just in the nick of time as Trevor and his friends, including Lucky, Celeste O’Connor (“Freaky”, “Selah and the Spades”), discover some ghoulish going’s on beneath a mountain not far from town.

In fact, what is going on is that Gozer, Olivia Wilde (“Richard Jewell”, “How It Ends”), is back, or attempting to get back to Earth at least. To do so Gozer needs her two faithful companions, the terror dogs Vinz Clortho the Keymaster and Zuul the Gatekeeper, with Callie being one and Phoebe’s summer-school teacher Grooberson, Paul Rudd (“The Shrink Next Door (TV)”, “Ant-Man and the Wasp”), being the other.

In order to save the day Phoebe, her new friend Podcast, Logan Kim (“Home Movie: The Princess Bride (TV)”), Trevor and Lucky must put Spengler’s plan into operation, but they can’t do it alone, they need some help…so, who you gonna call?

Whilst I wasn’t a fan of the 2016 Ghostbusters remake, I was eagerly looking forward to this one. From the posters and trailers it looked fun and looked to contain a lot of the original essence of Ghostbusters.

That latter point may not be there in spades, sure, there’s plenty of Easter eggs and nods to the previous two Ghostbuster films and there are plenty of laughs, but on both points it does lag behind the original somewhat.

However, I kind of expected that to an extent and it’s more than understandable. What Ghostbusters Afterlife does bring though is the Ghostbusters franchise to a new audience in a way that the 2016 movie never managed.

It is funny, it’s a great adventure, it feels like there’s enough old to keep fans of the originals in check and enough new to enable to move the franchise forward should they decide to, I sort of hope they don’t to be honest and instead find something new, but that’s not how studio’s work these days is it?

Fans of the original franchise may bemoan, well, probably everything, but this is one for the kids; to discover the joy of Ghostbusters, the delight at funny ghosts, clunking proton packs and geeky science people saving the day.