Ghostbusters: Afterlife Brings Us Back to the Movie Going Experience

Sometimes Fan Service is A Good Thing

Once upon a time, long long ago, in a place far far away, there was this moment when a movie came out, there was this feeling of anticipation, of desire, of wanting to see a movie up there on the big screen in surround sound in all of its glory. You would count down the days for that Friday to come to see the big premiere release of that film. But then, something changed. Politics changed, technology changed, a pandemic changed, people's interests changed, and movies changed for the worst. Movies changed as they began to bend to some faddish societal experimental reconfiguration. The movie-going public was not amused and rejected it in great numbers. What was once guaranteed box-office gold was met with box-office derision and ambivalence. Would this become our movie-going future? You would have placed your bet and said yes. But a funny thing happened on the way to the CinemaScope. There was this movie called Ghostbusters: Afterlife and it restored our faith in the movie-going revival.

First, I will begin by saying that there are two camps of audiences who are going to see this film. The first camp would be the original die-hard Ghostbusters fandom and the second camp would be the fan-going movie public, your average Joe’s and Jane’s. Perhaps there is a third camp and these are mainly those who found the 2016 version as a stand-out cinematic tour-de-force. I say this because judging by some early reviews by critics on rotten tomatoes, They seem to have a hard-on against Ghostbuster: Afterlife while bestowing the virtues of the 2016 version. They would be wrong, however. It’s more of a forgiveness letter to the fans for the 2016 version while thanking them for sticking around long enough for this film to be seen. As we cleanse our memory palette of the 2016 version, we welcome Ghostbusters: Afterlife. So, what does it offers?

Dor starters, we have new characters in the play; Mckenna Grace as Phoebe, Carrie Coon as Callie, Paul Rudd as Grooberson, Finn Wolfhard as Trevor, Celeste O’Connor as Lucky, and Logan Kim as Podcast. These new characters are served up well in this iteration. They are likable and they do a good job of not alienating the core fan base. The director, Jason Reitman, organically places the focus of the film on Phoebe without having to bludgeon the audience over the head with some sort of agenda. In fact, all of the females in this film come with their own set of dynamics that isn’t heavy-handed. They define who they are without denigrating or putting down any men. This has become a rarity in films these days Although, not having or giving any mention to who Trevor and Phoebe’s father is is an issue. The absentee father is an overused Hollywood trope that’s become problematic and absurd. With that being said, the film overall serves up the right notes as Jason Reitman orchestrates this little opus of a film.

On a separate note though, the film leaves out what the trailer had offered up. The scene where Phoebe is pelted with food from a group of girls is strategically missing. I suspect this was cut out because it may have been perceived as a bunch of mean girls bullying a girl with certain social limitations. The other footage of note is where Paul Rudd’s character asks Phoebe what her name was is also excised from the film. Maybe they wanted to keep the mystery of who Phoebe is from him a little longer?

This film really does invoke the movie-going experience and you definitely feel it.

The film is about your long-lost friend that you haven’t seen in a while. The engine of this film is McKenna Grace. She is the daughter to Callie, the sister to Trevor, and the granddaughter to Egon Spengler. She does a lot of the heavy lifting in carrying the movie. She does it without little effort but she has done it before as the wunderkind in the 2017 film, Gifted, alongside Chris Evans. In that film, she played a 7-year-old.

The rest of the cast does an amiable job of supporting her in the effort, especially Podcast. With him pairing up with Phoebe, you can visualize a sequel with both of them reprising their roles. In fact, he compliments her in this newfound partnership. Once again, Jason makes their introduction organically. Podcast recognizes something in her that doesn’t scare him off. He embraces the quirks.

I did want a little more of Paul Rudd’s character though. While the Walmart scenes were okay, he left a lot of meat on the bone character development-wise. I can say the same for Annie Potts’ Janine. Seems as if they didn’t give her enough to do or say and there were so many unanswered questions about what her character had been up to since the original. What happened between her and Egon, why wasn’t she the mother of Callie, why did she follow Egon to some Podunk town? Who is Callie’s mother? Why didn’t Janine give any more details about Egon? Are we to assume that whatever relationship they had, was rekindled since she was conveniently there at his house in the middle of nowhere?

I won’t deduct anything away from this but perhaps a follow-up is in order should there be a sequel. Another point should also be addressed, how did Phoebe know about which switch turns on the proton pack? How did Podcast figure out the controls of the remote ghost capture car? How did she get back up to the top after sliding down a pole to Egon’s secret lab? Still, no point deductions yet.

The action kicks in as we go on this ride of reinvigorating the Ghostbuster franchise. We get to see the symbols from the original Ghostbuster outing, Gozer, played by an unrecognizable Olivia Wilde, the demon minion dogs, zombies, and streaks of lights darting in and out around the town. I will give Jason Reitman a bit of some extra credit by turning old effects and props around into some refreshingly video-enhanced creations. I would categorize it as taking old stale bread and making it warm and fresh again.

It was also good to see Ecto 1 as well. Although I will take some points away with this observation. When Trevor was driving it, wasn’t it odd that the motor to that old vehicle ran as quiet as a mouse? The muffler has no signs of oxidation from being stored in an open-air barn. There was no smoke coming from the exhaust. Why didn’t the car need a ring job from being dried out over the years? Since they didn’t have any money to speak of, how and where did he get the parts? Even the gas in the tank was old, surely he had to remove the tank and get that fix.

 When the car flew up in the air, yeah, that was a big no-no for a 15-year-old driving it with no experience handling a vehicle of that size. A car would have t be moving pretty fast to fly that far in the air and a 15-year-old with no experience sends the wrong message. Yeah, some major point deductions.

When they are battling the demon though, the film rights itself when the surviving Ghostbusters finally make their appearance. It was no surprise but it was great to see them. Venkman seemed to have aged the hardest. What Jason does here gives us that moment that Star Wars: The Force Awakens failed to do, give us our heroes in one scene. Jason hits us in the fells. He brings it home with the spectral image of a deceased Egon assisting his granddaughter in holding the proton gun trying to eviscerate Gozer. Venkman and company turn to their right to see Egon battling alongside them. The effect was really good. It was good to see all of them together and at the same time bittersweet to witness.

The battle ends, Egon turns to his former teammates as they say the things that they should have said when he was alive. As you watched this though, you couldn’t help but wonder if this was Bill Murray speaking from the heart to Harold Ramis? Was he really being heartfelt since it was him who held up the making of another Ghostbuster film? Egon also gets some closure with Callie. Earlier she had found a wall of photographs of her growing up that were in Egon’s lab. When Egon finally let himself go, you had to feel like he was also saying goodbye to the fans as well. This was a love letter for all of those fans who still believed in Ghostbuster the original. The fans that believed in Spengler, Venkman, Stan, and Zeddemore, the Ghostbusters.

Three and a half out of five stars.

 

Dave Chappelle, Larry Elder, Winsome Sears, and Kyle Rittenhouse Are All White Supremacists

So Says Joy Reid, Ibrim X. Kendi, Michael Eric Dyson, and The Liberal Wing of the B.E.M.

It’s been a strange five years in America following the election of Donald J. Trump as president of these United States. A lot of things have unfolded in the realm of political discourse. Topics like gender identity, race identity, political identity, immigration, the economy, just to name a few, have been swirling around us purely unabated. Illegal immigrants are pouring into our southern border and the Biden Administration is doing absolutely nothing to curtail the influx. We are back to being dependent on foreign oil when only a year ago we weren’t. Of these lists of discussion points, one subject seems to have reared its head to garner attention in a way that’s sometimes is ridiculous, sometimes perturbing, and sometimes outright outrageous.

Politically, we are a divided nation. The left has never accepted the fact that Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in such a resounding defeat. It’s not just that he won, he won in such a way that many of the left couldn’t fathom the loss. Their belief system was destroyed and they retaliated indiscriminately with a “take no prisoners” approach if you weren’t politically aligned with them. As the four years lowly dissolved away, we saw how the lies were spread, how news headlines were manipulated and implied a false counterpoint, and how the mainstream media obfuscated the truth in so many ways that Walter Cronkite is spinning like a top in his grave.

Such is the case of some newsworthy individuals that go by the name of Dave Chappelle, Larry Elder, Winsome Sears, and Kyle Rittenhouse. All of these individuals have been accused of either being white supremacists or being a puppet for white supremacists. With the exception of Mr. Rittenhouse, three of them are American blacks. What did all of them do wrong? Well, they were on the wrong side of the Black Elitists Media, The BEM. Black elitists have been around for a very long time. It started around the Reconstruction Era when blacks were freed from slavery and those who gained significance financially, economically, and sociably, defined themselves through what would become a class system. During that time, American blacks were loyal to the Republican party as that was the house of Abraham Lincoln, the man who freed them. Those freedmen, men like Booker T. Washington, gained prominence alongside their white contemporaries. Those who were fortunate enough to convert their situation into productive gain did so. If they could take a few souls with them, that was fine but not all got an invitation to the party. It, for the most part, became nothing more of who had what and had not. Even back then, the machine of capitalism and commerce was changing into something quite different. While race was still a factor, the class system became this evolutionary creature no one saw coming. In today’s climate, it isn’t about race, it’s about which class that you’re in.

Let’s take a look at Dave Chappelle. Mr. Chappelle is a noted comedian. At times, he’s been labeled “controversial”. His humor is biting, brutal, cutting, and honest. He’s an observational comedian. I know what I speak because I used to be the head comedy writer for four years on a top market radio show. I used to write for seven voice personalities. Mr. Chappelle’s observational humor garnered him some Netflix presentations and they have been very successful. It was his last outing though that wrinkled the brows of many in the alphabet community. They, unsurprisingly, were not amused by Mr. Chappelle’s humorous observations. They were so much not amused that a small protest was formed outside of Netflix’s corporate offices. The critics slammed Mr. Chappelle’s performance and some reporters likened Mr. Chappelle as being the mouthpiece for white supremacy. Hmm, imagine that. A black comedian who has won countless awards, including Emmys, NAACP image awards, Grammys, and a Mark Twain Prize for American humor, is the voice of white supremacists.

Mr. Chappelle isn’t alone in his foray into controversy, in fact, he’s in good company. Richard Pryor had his run-in with the gay community and George Carlin had his fair share of controversy as well. But we live in a different era, an era that has social media. Social media is a bane to our existence. It is as poisonous as it is fruitful. We are living with it but we are not mastering it. It is mastering us. Mr. Chappelle is trying to tame it but I see little hope in trying to reign in this bucking stallion.

Larry Elder, on the other hand, tossed his name into the California recall election in hopes of becoming the next governor of the state. Because of name recognition, he bolted to the top of the list and became a viable candidate. But a funny thing happened on the way to the campaign. He was assaulted and pelted with an egg-throwing, gorilla-masked white lady who swore at him and struck out violently to members of his entourage. Normally, especially in California, you would think that there would be a lot of press coverage over this incident. In fact, there was very little mainstream media coverage and there was no police investigation over the incident as well. Surely this was a hate crime. The mainstream press didn’t see it this way. The mainstream press didn’t cover it that way. The mainstream press treated it like ice cream baking in the hot sun, watching it slowly melt away. The only significant press Mr. Elder received and was carried nationally was that of a reporter tantamount in describing Mr. Elder as the black face to white supremacy. Mr. Elder ran as a Republican.

While Mr. Elder talked about the issues facing California like homelessness, the teaching of critical race theory in elementary schools, and people fleeing the state in record numbers because of the current government’s policies, his Democratic opponent, Gavin Newsom, instead brought Donald Trump into the campaign. By attempting to link Trump with Elder, Newsom had reverted to practicing fear-mongering. Coupled by the fact that Newsom received a big monetary boost from some noteworthy corporations in the final push, Mr. Elder lost his campaign.

Winsome Sears, however, did win her race for Lt. Governor for the state of Virginia. She ran as a Republican in a Democratic state as well as Republican governor-elect Glenn Youngkin. Her win was overshadowed by Youngkin’s victory over his Democratic opponent, Terry McAuliffe. Youngkin’s victory and lead-up became fodder as McAuliffe made a few political mistakes in the final close of the election. While the mainstream media licked its wounds over the Youngkin win, they chose to take his win in a different manner by slandering the voters of Virginia as an overture to white supremacy. Leading in that assessment was MSNBC’s, Joy Reid. Never mind that many of the voters were people of color, they too were aligned with white supremacy. They refused to acknowledge

Winsome Sear’s win was a historic moment for her as she became the first woman of color to win the election. Instead, Joy Reid, academia’s Micheal Eric Dyson, and a few other MSNBC talking head pundits labeled Mrs. Sears as a talking vessel for white supremacy and she did not represent the black ideology. Well, who the ph.uck made Joy Reid the arbiter of who is black? Who the ph.uck died and made Michael Eric Dyson the overlord of black people in politics? Other news outlets, with black people on their payroll leading in the talking points, were parlaying the same rhetoric led by the left-leaning CNN.

But how do they get away with saying some of the most racist of things?

MSNBC is owned by Comcast Communication. Surely if a white person would have said the things that Joy Reid had said about Winsome Sears, they would have been given their walking papers. Just ask Megyn Kelly. She got into a discussion with Jenna Bush Hager about black face and presumed that wearing black face was her way of honoring that person. Naive as that was, she had to walk the plank and apologize for her comments. But that wasn’t enough, the powers that be chose to remove her from her show and the network. So, why do Joy Reid and all the other faces of color who degenerated Winsome Sears get a pass? Just because she is black doesn’t mean she is allowed to say racist things. If you are assuming that if a black person calls another black person the N-word, then that is socially acceptable. In fact, it is not. If that black person does not use that language and doesn’t like being referred to or being identified to that word, it is offensive. That person has every right to sue you for defamation no matter what your melanin is.

Of course, none of this is new. If you are a black Republican, your viewpoints are not in lockstep with the liberal B.E.M. Mrs. Sears was looked down upon by the B.E.M. Her historic win had been devalued by the corporate left-leaning B.E.M. The only network that would interview her the next day was the Fox Network. You won’t see her face splashed across any major magazine publication like Time or Vanity Fair. That honor is reserved for Michelle Obama who has graced their cover several times.

Ibram X. Kindi (formerly Ibram Henry Rogers) is an author, professor, and anti-racist activist at Boston University. In the black community, he is also known as a race hustler. He pits groups or attempts to pit groups against one another based on some conflated rationale about what and how blacks are perceived, how past treatment affects any future and current interactions, and whatever spews out of his mouth as being the gospel according to him. From his point of view, we all are monolithic thinkers. We must adhere to his principles, his philosophy, his way of worshipping the ground he walks upon. He is paid handsomely for his obtuse rhetoric of one-dimensional thinking. He’s more problematic than beneficial. His viewpoint is more of a cult teaching than anything else you can hang your hat on after you hear him speak if you can sit through I long enough.

Where have we gone? In a time where the moniker of diversity and inclusion is bandied back and forth like a bottle of nitroglycerin, she is not discussed at all about her with the B.E.M. Winsome Sears’ candidacy was not run on her being a black woman, she ran on the issues, she ran on her character, a Marine vet among others. But because of her political ideology, the mainstream media has been tepid in praising her victory.

Kyle Rittenhouse is a Hispanic 18-year-old young man. He has been accused of wounding one man and killing two other men, all three of who are white. Mr. Rittenhouse was associated with being a white supremacist. How can that be you ask? It is because he participated in trying to defend a city from rioters and looters during the summer of 2020 where roving bands of people who were protesting a police shooting was mixing in some looting and setting fires to businesses all in the name of anarchy under the guise of peaceful protests. Mr. Rittenhouse has pleaded not guilty across the board as closing arguments begin. Even Joe “Let’s Go, Brandon” Biden has accused him of being a white supremacist and domestic terrorist during the presidential campaign. But Joe “Fartman” Biden spoke way too soon on this as he pandered to his base.

Big Tech social media platforms and the mainstream media want to control the narrative on this case. It is intentional when you see any fundraising efforts dedicated to the defense of Mr. Rittenhouse get a denial based on some unknown arbitrary and obscure clause in terms of service agreement. Your conspiratorial radar pops up as to who is pulling the string with all of this? You have every right to feel this way.

There is pushback on this though. Mr. Chappelle announced that he is not bending the knee to these flaccid cancel culture fanatics. Larry Elders has been bolstered by the fact that he ran a good campaign without the backing of the mainstream interest who backed Newsom and should he decide to run again, he will be better prepared and equipped to make the challenge even more certain. Winsome Sears is not stopping and has already accepted the challenges coming to her position. She will accept it with grace and dignity just as the Marines prepared her. And should Mr. Rittenhouse be acquitted on all charges, let’s hope he sues those who slandered him as a white supremacist.

And let me leave you with a bit of a history lesson. It was a cabal of southern Democrats who bestowed us with Jim Crow laws. If you don’t know what Jim Crow laws were, basically, it was a set of rules that hampered the movements of black people by legalizing racial segregation. Starting in 1865 and ending in 1968, blacks were restricted from doing things we have taken for granted, like rights to assemble, due process, vote, not being used as slave labor while incarcerated. But today’s Democrats seem to want this racial divide. Kamala Harris, while attorney general in California, put prisoners to work in putting out forest fires. These men were not trained as firefighters and they weren’t paid like firefighters. They were used as the men from the Jim Crow days. Black men were arrested during that era just for walking on a train track accused of trespassing. This is your vice president who used the vestiges of Jim Cow and got slave labor. What is that old saying, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,”.

Are WE repeating ourselves by forgetting the past?