LM23 Rating: The mini Stay Puft Marshmallow men should have their own spinoff movie
I was so excited when I saw that Ghostbusters: Afterlife was available for streaming on Amazon Prime. Now I’m just relieved that we didn’t pay to go see this move in the theatre. Ghostbusters: Afterlife is a boring re-imagining in which random kids suit up to fight ghosts. Why? I don’t know.
The movie is promising when we find Callie (Carrie Coon) trying to cut her son Trevor’s hair in the kitchen. Trevor is played by the always compelling Finn Wolfhard. Meanwhile, her movie contrived precious tween, Phoebe (Mckenna Grace) is busying fooling around with electricity. Phoebe is an androgynous looking girl with a short curly mop and oversized glasses. The filmmakers really worked at at making sure the know-it-all but socially awkward granddaughter of the late Egon Spengler looked just like him but in a tween’s body.
Within five minutes, the little family has packed their bags as they have been evicted from their house after the mom had missed the rental payments. But the mom or the kids don’t really seem worried at all of the prospect of living in poverty as Callie’s dad had died just in time to bequeath them his huge farm land and home. So off they go to their new hometown which is a speck of a town in rural Illinois. It’s the kind of town that seems trapped in time and has one main street with all of the shops you need. And of course there will be a kitschy throwback fast food joint where the teenage servers take orders in rollerskates. And of course there will be a random girl that will catch the boy teen’s eye.
What’s confusing with the setup of the movie is that it’s apparently summer break, and yet Phoebe is enrolled in summer school. Isn’t she supposed to be the smarter kid? The film focuses mainly on Phoebe’s character so there are times where the brother, Trevor, is nowhere to be found. But I see why despite it being summer time, we still need a school scene. Because how else will we cross paths with Mr. Grooberson (Paul Rudd) the teacher on duty for summer school. But all Mr. Grooberson is teaching the young’uns is old 80’s horror movies like Child’s Play and Cujo. And all I learn from watching the movie is that Paul Rudd was totally wasted and was basically a cameo.
I can’t even be bothered to write anything more about the movie. We’re forced to believe that this genius tween figures out where Grandpa Spengler hid his Ghostbusters equipment and uniforms and manages to wrangle another overly movie precious kid to join her on her quest. When the little kid introduces himself as “Podcast”, I pretty much wanted to stop watching.
One of things I hate about Hollywood movies is how they always need to create kid characters who are basically adults, but they’re just played by kids. I get kids can be really smart, and not to toot my own horn, but I was one of those overly smart, overachieving kids. I took advanced courses and had to do weird tests to test my range of intellect. I just seemed to be able to do all of the work really fast and I couldn’t understand why it was so hard for everyone else. I won all the awards and made all my teachers proud. But it wasn’t as if I didn’t play outside or that I knew everything about seismology or whatever else was put in front of me (and unlike the Spenglers, I was born and raised in a town on a fault line). I still had to study and practice. My intellect was based more on the fact that I could catch on quick and I was able to overload my brain with information.
There’s a really ludicrous scene between Phoebe and Grooberson where she’s not interested in watching the movie, but is excited about the seismic maps and things in Grooberson’s office. They then have a full on conversation about seismic activity that had been occurring and it’s odd because they don’t live on a fault line.
Meanwhile, Trevor got a job at the fast food joint and doing his teen hormones thing over there. And the mom, who doesn’t appear to have a job, is able to go to the local hardware store to buy paint supplies for their huge but rundown new digs.
And of course, Callie ends up going out to dinner with Mr. Grooberson. Because in tiny towns like this, anyone who’s single and passably attractive will be attracted to each other. What bothered me a lot was Callie’s character. She’s supposed to be the mom, but she doesn’t seem to care about her kids. As I mentioned before, there are times when Trevor is nowhere to be seen or heard in the house though it appears to be the evening. And when confronted about her dad Egon, who Callie despises as he apparently abandoned her, Callie replies bitterly to Phoebe that her dad was an “asshole.” Instead of a mom, Callie comes off as a reluctant older sister guardian to her two younger siblings.
And when Callie tells her kids that she’s going to go for dinner with Mr. Grooberson, it makes you think that Callie is more interested in finding a man and doing her own thing. Callie’s anger about her dad is also peculiar because despite not wanting to acknowledge him, she’s okay with inheriting his huge home and farmland. And from what we hear from the townsfolk, the great Egon Spengler fell on tough times. He was an apparent loner who was dubbed the “Dirt Farmer”. This nickname is called out one too many times in the film. It’s like we get it, he was a weirdo that everyone called “Dirt Farmer”.
But what we never quite understand is why and how Egon ended up on the farm on his own. We don’t know why he would abandon his wife and Callie. From what I can sort of remember from the Ghostbusters movies, I could have sworn Egon was very mature and responsible. So I don’t understand why they would choose to have this fractured family trope. The daughter hates the father, but the granddaughter, who has never met her grandfather, seems to adore and defend her literally ghost granddad. Are we forced to make the conclusion of Phoebe’s bizarre allegiance to her grandfather because she loves science and so did he?
The setting of the movie is even harder for my mind to wrap around. Yes, it’s a small town in the middle of nowhere, but it also seems more like a ghost town. The only place where there seems to be people out and about is the throwback burger joint. But other than that, we don’t really see people. Even when there’s a huge storm cloud forming over the farmhouse and the ghost monsters are running amuck, we don’t see the town’s sheriff (Bookeem Woodbine) and his deputies running to see what’s going on. He’s also the father of Lucky (Celeste O’Connor) who is the girl Trevor has the hots for.
But I guess it’s normal for the parents in the movie to not care about the whereabouts of their kids. Because both Podcast and Lucky get roped into the ghostbusting game and not once are the parents or the worry about being home for dinner is brought up. Yes, it’s a tiny town where people probably know each other and their doors are left unlocked. But are children allowed to roam the streets all hours of the day without checking in?
Not even the appearance of the original Ghostbusters and the ghost of Egon could save this film. It would have been better if the original Ghostbusters were still in the game, but the next generation, like their children and grandchildren, are now the main ones in the field. But instead, we have a contrived sappy familial story where the abandoned daughter of Egon suddenly forgives him because she comes across a huge collection of pictures of her which her dad kept in his work area.
The only fresh and fun part of Ghostbusters: Afterlife was when a swarm of mini Stay Puft Marshmallow men appear in a Walmart grocery aisle. They’re so super cute. I wish I could have a few of them as pets. These little guys had more personality than any of the actors on the screen. I won’t even bother to wonder why Grooberson is making a night time stop at the Walmart, but I guess we need a reason to encounter these little guys. And don’t get me started as to why when Grooberson returns to his car in the parking lot, the parking lot is practically empty and it looks like it’s too late for the store to even be opened.
I don’t even remember or care to Google what the ghosts were in the movie. I just know it took a long time for them to appear and it was just by a stroke of luck that the kiddie Ghostbusters were able to suit up and get the equipment to fight them. And of course, the OG Ghostbusters show up just in time to finish the job.
I really liked Ghostbusters from 2016 or the reboot with female Ghostbusters. There was a story. There were people. There were actors that actually sparked my interest. Ghostbusters: Afterlife is a wannabe throwback, but it completely missed the mark. Don’t waste your time.
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