Ghostbusters Answer the Call (2016) Review

Ghostbusters Answer the Call (2016)

Well, last week I reviewed Tomorrowland. A good film. Not a brilliant one, but still a good one. The point was not every film has to be Citizen Kane, or the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Some can just be good without being great or iconic. 

Not everything has to be a ten out of ten story. You don’t need to dine out at a fine restaurant every day, if you did it would soon become bland and tasteless. You can enjoy fish and chips from the chippy down the street too and often because of that you’ll enjoy the more elaborate stuff more.

So in this metaphor where does Ghostbusters Answer the Call (2016) come in? It’s the refried Chinese you got yesterday, at the discount counter, that leaves you vomiting into a bucket for the rest of the day. It’s bad, it leaves an unpleasant taste in your mouth and quite frankly I could have and should do without it.

The only reason I’m reviewing this mess is that there’s something that bugs me about it. Actually there’s quite a few things that bug me about it and it’s going to be a long list if I have to tick every one off. Fortunately there are other reviews out there that have done a far better job of eviscerating this film and laying its many flaws bare for all to see.

That said there are a couple off arguments against this film that I haven’t seen very often, if at all, and they outline what really went wrong with Ghostbusters. What the real problem, deep down at it’s very core, was. The only way to stop it from happing again is to rummage through the wreckage left in this film’s wake and drag the last dregs of it’s iniquity kicking and screaming into the light.

The light being an obscure blog review perhaps no-one is going to read, but still, it’s a light. Of sorts.

But before all that I have to preface this with something. Two quick points, the first is the cast. I’ve seen a few of the actors in this cast in other things. Most notably Hemsworth, but I’ve seen the main four as well. Some in films I like, others not so much. Casting for me is not really an issue and if you want an all girl team? Heh, why not? The cast and director didn’t appeal to me on paper, but I like to think I was open enough to have given it a chance. The other point is the remake issue. I like the original Ghostbusters, again I think it’s a good film. I don’t quote it, I don’t watch it every halloween as some people do. I don’t set up a shrine and worship at the alter of Harold Ramis. It’s a good film and if I want to watch it I will. It’s a solid eight out of ten for me. So I don’t violently object to a reboot, I would want it done well surely but I don’t object.

The Best Bond?

One of the reasons I restarted these reviews was that I forwarded a link to my ancient, fawning, opinion on Timothy Dalton’s acting when a friend of mine started posting something on Facebook. He said it was good and I should try writing this sort of thing again.

Well among other things it got me thinking about James Bond in general and I want to take this opportunity to do a deconstruction of Bond. What I think works and what I think, in retrospect, didn’t.

So, lets start at the beginning with the creator; Ian Fleming. Here’s the thing a lot of people gloss over, Fleming was the original super spy agent. This is not a joke, it’s completely true. He was part of the founding team of MI6 and was behind one of the most infamous spy operations of the second world war, Operation Mincemeat. If you don’t know the story behind Mincemeat you owe it to yourself to look it up, it is a hollywood drama. It just actually happened!

Anyway after basically inventing the real modern spy industry Fleming created Bond as the ultimate gentleman spy. Cultured, refined, ruthless, charming and ultimately without morals. He was written as an anti-hero, the anti-hero. Not someone to look up to but still respect. The idea was that the bad guys aren’t going to play fair and rather than being the good guy that wins despite this Bond was going to fight dirty first.

This was new at the time. If you look at the classic setup the hero is the so called white hat and always a good guy no matter what and the villain twirls his moustache as he does evil things, evilly. As soon as Bond comes into popularity the Anti-hero is more recognised and that moral black and white we’re all so comfortable with in action get thrown out the window. So the impact of Bond in popular fiction is very, very important and we’re still coming to terms with it in some cases. 

Bond was massively popular when it started as pulp novels, one coming out every year like the latest blockbuster movie. People flocked to the shops to buy the latest adventure to read on holiday, so naturally with such a willing market films were going to follow.

The first Bond film was Dr No (1962) and looking back on it today it is horribly dated. With a lot of visual gags and references going completely over people’s heads. For example there’s one shot, shortly after Bond meets with Dr No, where he sees a painting resting against a banister. It means nothing today, but at the time that was supposed to be a reference to a famous painting that had been stolen a year earlier and was still missing at the time (its since been recovered).

There’s quite a lot of these little facts, enough to keep IMDB trivia hunters occupied for days and that’s something you have to take into account when looking back at Bond over the years. What worked then doesn’t work now. For example Connery’s Bond would often slap and abuse women he thought were hiding something from him, or if they were hysterical. This casual sexism was risqué at the time, done to show he wasn’t a good man, but today it is utterly unacceptable. Moore’s version casually bedding anything with a skirt at the time showed he was virile and charming. Today? Not so much. With our rose-tinted nostalgia glasses firmly in place I’m going to try and review all the actors to play Bond and try and understand the impact they had on each other and the Character as a whole…

Film Review:- Tomorrowland A World Beyond

Well I'm back. I'm going to start trying to write reviews again and I'm got to start with what I think is a hidden gem, that I'm sure is going to become a cult classic in a few years.

Tomorrowland A World Beyond

Now I'm going to try and avoid spoilers, because while the twist is sort of obvious, especially in hindsight, its important you follow the journey with the characters. Having someone like me just blurt out whats going on does take something away from the film and I don't want to ruin it.

It didn't do very well in theatres, and has been a slow burn on DVD / Video / Download and there are a number of reasons for it. The trailers had no idea how to market this movie, trying to portray an action adventure film. Oh it's certainly an adventure film but the action isn't as important as the message. Lots of professional critics latched onto that message and didn't like it, accusing the film of being too preachy and pointing out that the solution was too simple for what is a very complicated problem. Ironically that was the argument from the film, it knew the answer sounded simple in principle, difficult in execution but worth it in the end.

But I'm getting ahead of myself, we need to get some context. First of all its based on a Disney theme park ride and that puts you on the defensive immediately. Sure Pirates of the Caribbean was good, at first. It all went down hill quite quickly as it became an overblown mess. Then you have other films with the same principle, like Eddie Murphy's Haunted Mansion, and the alarm bells start ringing. In fact it was because of this I avoided the film in the cinema and despite my curiosity I only picked it up a couple years after it came out. Which was a shame. In truth it takes a really good director, that has the complete faith of the studio, to take a tricky premise and make it work. The co-writer and director was Brad Bird. Skill and faith wasn't the problem, Brad Bird has films like The Iron Giant and The Incredibles under his belt and also did a fantastic job with his first live action film Mission Impossible - Ghost Protocol. He'd proven his mettle and the studio backed off just enough to give him the room he needed to tell the story he wanted. Now sure he wasn't alone in writing and Damon Lindelof, he of Lost fame, was also involved but he was just the co-driver. Bird had his hands on the wheel and it was his baby

Next up we have to look at the cast because aside of two big names, George Clooney and Hugh Laurie, the cast is full of relative new comers. Including Britt Robinson (who does have a long list behind her IMDB page but Tomorrowland is her first "big" role) and Raffey Cassidy. Both young girls are fantastic actors that had great chemistry with each other and the rest of the cast. I will be very surprised if the two of them don't go on to have legendary careers. All this together you have a recipe for a very good movie.