Ivan Reitman – Memphis Flyer

Ghostbusters is a prime example of lightning in a bottle. There are some things that are just unique products of the time and place where they were created. They defy formula. Even if you put the same team back together and gave them all the tools and time they needed, they couldn’t replicate their success.

The 1984 Ghostbusters was the product of the fevered mind of Dan Aykroyd. The story of a trio of misfit scientists who travel through time and space to battle supernatural threats was meant as a follow-up to his and John Belushi’s mega-hit The Blues Brothers, with the third part to be played by Eddie Murphy. After Belushi died in 1982, Murphy got his own franchise with Beverly Hills Cop, and Aykroyd retreated into a fallout shelter on Martha’s Vineyard with Harold Ramis to retool the script for Bill Murray and director Ivan Reitman. The Ghostbusters became supernatural entrepreneurs, more pest control than Doctor Who.

Grace, Kim, and Finn Wolfhard cruisin’ in the Ectomobile.

Genre-wise, the fantasy action comedy had very little precedent. Reitman got the tone exactly right. It was the post-Star Wars sci-fi boom, so there was an ample budget for special effects. Aykroyd was still at the top of his game, Ramis played Spock-but-funny, Ernie Hudson was the relatable everyman, Sigourney Weaver was sexy as hell, and Murray delivered one of the greatest comedy performances of all time. Propelled by a theme song by former Stevie Wonder sideman Ray Parker Jr. that became an unlikely No. 1 hit, Ghostbusters became the most profitable comedy of all time.

When the principals got back together five years later for Ghostbusters II, it wasn’t the same. The film has its moments, but the elements never gel the way they did the first time out. For years, Aykroyd worked on a third installment, called Hellbent, but Murray saw the writing on the wall and once Ramis died in 2014, that seemed to be the end of it.

But Ghostbusters is all about coming back from the dead, so in 2016, a gender-swapped version was produced with Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Leslie Jones, and Kate McKinnon. It, too, had its moments, but lacked that certain magic, and was the subject of a sexist social media backlash. Which might be why Ghostbusters: Afterlife exists.

At least it’s better than The Rise of Skywalker, the other film that was produced as a response to closed-minded people freaking out over changes to their favorite ’80s film franchise. Produced by Ivan Reitman and directed by his son Jason Reitman, Afterlife moves the action from New York City to rural Oklahoma. Callie (Carrie Coon) gets evicted from her New York apartment with her two children, Trevor (Finn Wolfhard), and Phoebe (Mckenna Grace), only to find out that her estranged father has died and left them a spooky old farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. While Callie tries to deal with her late father’s estate, Trevor tries to fit in with the local teens — especially cool girl Lucky (Celeste O’Connor). Phoebe, a budding science geek who is too smart for her own good, is drawn into investigating unexplained earthquake swarms with her summer school teacher Gary (Paul Rudd). This part of the film is a solid kids-solving-mysteries story, like Goonies, but less annoying.

As the story threads come together, Phoebe and Trevor learn that their grandfather, whom they never met, was Egon Spengler, a member of the Ghostbusters who cleaned up the Manhattan ghost flap of 1984. Naturally, the reason he moved to central Oklahoma was ghost-related, and now his grandkids must clean up the mess he left behind or, you know … human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria!

It’s weird to say, but it’s the familiar elements that derail Afterlife. Just when things get cooking with the new kids, we have to pause to re-introduce the Ectomobile. When the surviving old guys show up to help save the day, it seems perfunctory. Even the glorious moment when Bill Murray is doing Peter Venkman again undercuts the “action” part of “action comedy.”

You can’t catch lightning in a bottle a second time. But I’m willing to give Ghostbusters: Afterlife the benefit of the doubt for two reasons: one, the screenplay mostly works, with the story flowing from the internal logic Aykroyd set up in 1984, even though it’s not nearly as funny. And two, Mckenna Grace gives an absolutely crackerjack performance. Mark my words, she’s a movie star in waiting.

Why remake Ghostbusters?

A perfect movie is a rare beast. To make every shot work, every actor deliver, to land every script beat requires skill, vision, and luck. The 1984 Ghostbusters originated in the fevered brain of Dan Aykroyd while he was in the middle of one of comedy’s greatest hot streaks. The OG SNL star conceived of three movies to feature him and his best friend, John Belushi: The Blues Brothers, Ghostbusters, and Spies Like Us. Just as the unlikely success of The Blues Brothers gave the pair the run of Hollywood, Belushi OD’d. Aykroyd and Caddyshack director Harold Ramis retooled Ghostbusters‘ insane first draft, which featured psychedelic scenes of astrally projecting Ghostbusters fighting hordes of interdimensional spectres, as a more grounded ensemble movie set in New York City.

In 1984, all the pieces fell together for producer/director Ivan Reitman to make the quintessential action comedy. Aykroyd and Ramis created a pair of indelible geek icons in the schlubby Ray Stantz and the Spock-like Egon Spengler. Sigourney Weaver did duel duty as symphony musician Dana Barrett and gatekeeper spirit Zuul, playing off of Rick Moranis as a geeky accountant possessed by the Keymaster Vinz Clortho. The role of Winston Zeddmore was originally offered to Eddie Murphy, but when he turned it down in favor of Beverly Hills Cop, Ernie Hudson stepped into the thankless role of audience surrogate. Looking back on Ghostbusters from the perspective of 2016, it’s clear that Bill Murray is the key to the picture’s success. His Lothario con man turned paranormal investigator Peter Venkman is a perfectly pitched performance worthy of Chaplin, Keaton, or Cleese.

Remaking Ghostbusters seemed a fool’s errand. Reitman captured lightning in a bottle, an artifact of a certain moment when all the players were at the top of their game, by mixing ’80s horror beats with Second City gonzo yucks. Even the core creative team couldn’t reproduce the magic. Remember Ghostbusters II? Of course not. You might as well try to remake Casablanca.

This was the task set before director Paul Feig. In a move that upset a vocal hoard of internet man-babies, the creator of Freaks and Geeks upped the already impossible difficulty level by gender-swapping the characters. Well, I’m here to tell you that the Men’s Rights movement picked the wrong hill to die on.

Leslie Jones, Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, and Kate McKinnon don the proton packs in Paul Feig’s remake of Ghostbusters.

Feig surmised that the secret of Ghostbusters was in the chemistry, and the director of Bridesmaids knows funny women. The team of Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Kate McKinnon, and Leslie Jones is even more finely balanced than Murray, Aykroyd, Ramis, and Hudson. Wiig’s Erin Gilbert, a former paranormal investigator trying to get tenure as a physics professor at straight-laced Columbia University, can’t touch the crystalline genius of Murray, but she’s a good fit for this version. McCarthy hones her wild talent with discipline and precision, turning in the best performance of her career as Abby, the Ray Stantz analog. Feig and Parks and Recreation writer Katie Dippold’s script gives Jones’ character, Patty, a New York transit employee who gets sucked into the Ghostbusters’ world, more to do than Hudson, and the film is all the better for it. The most perverse casting choice is Chris Hemsworth in a hybrid of Sigourney Weaver and Annie Potts’ cynical receptionist; Thor rises to the occasion by whipping out previously unseen comedy chops. But it’s McKinnon who slyly steals the show. McKinnon reworks Ramis with a brash physicality. Geeks are cool now, but McKinnon, who takes her look from the animated version of Egon, avoids the autistic minstrel show approach epitomized by The Big Bang Theory and wrings more depth out of renegade techie Holtzmann than the script provides.

As long as Feig and Dippold follow Aykroyd and Ramis’ beats, the movie hums along, but when they attempt to graft on a parody of The Avengers climax in place of the intimate confrontation with Gozer the Destructor, the film spins out of control. Still, speaking as an old school Ghostbusters fan, this remake is better than it has any right to be. In 1984, Ghostbusters was a standout in a quality field that included Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Purple Rain, and fellow action comedy classics Gremlins and Romancing the Stone. 2016’s Ghostbusters comes as a sip of water in a historic drought. Feig has pulled off the impossible by successfully reworking an unlikely masterpiece, and everyone involved deserves major kudos.

But seriously, let’s not try to remake Casablanca, OK?