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Movies: Poor Things, Barbie and Oppenheimer are stuck in La La Land

Decided I needed something to pick my spirits up after the loss so I watched Steve!, a 2-part documentary on the life and career of Steve Martin. Brought back many memories of watching him on SNL with my brother, or listening to his records or going to his movies with friends. Not a year goes by that one of us doesn't find a reason to quote, "He hates these cans!", "Where's your other hand?", "If she's like a dog, we do it on the paper" or any of dozens of others. Fun watch.
 
Deutsche Gopher Fan said:
The movie Dante’s Peak with pierce brosnam is soo bad but I love it. Came across it tonight and had to watch the rest
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I always liked Volcano better...but both are just so badly awesome!

Speaking of bad...Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire was almost as bad as I thought. No joke, I fell asleep twice and the movie is like 100 minutes long. Every character gets short changed except Phoebe but hey we got Paul Rudd making the same 5 jokes he makes in every film and mostly mailing it in Bill Murray style. Stranger Things guy is in like 5 scenes total and despite having like 345 storylines almost none of them get any real run because we needed 20 minutes of a weird will they/won't they between a ghost and Phoebe that takes up a quarter of the film. Then you have 2700000000 cameos and call backs that serve almost no purpose (except Patton Oswalt who is Mr. Exposition Dump) and you can see why the film will be lucky to break even worldwide.

This could have worked as a series...the plot threads would have been greatly benefited and the cameos and tech might have had more weight. (I mean they have an entire lab of trapped ghosts they are studying and new tech they are developing...which gets like 5 minutes on screen) As a film though it felt forced, it felt rushed and all I kept saying was "why was this even made?". Its like they took all of the stuff people liked about Afterlife and forget about it.
 
So…if you fell asleep twice, how do you know you didn’t miss the content that brought the whole show together, like a rug in a room?
 
St. Clown said:
So…if you fell asleep twice, how do you know you didn’t miss the content that brought the whole show together, like a rug in a room?
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Because I asked. I was awake for the two exposition dumps ;^) The action is what is boring...

If you see it, pay attention to how certain characters just disappear. (Finn is the most egregious as is Lucky) To me it feels like they wrote the script without those characters and then realized they were contracted to be in the film so they just kind of are there...then aren't. Plus they add in a few characters that easily could have been filled by them. (like Podcast or the weird British scientist who works for Winston)

This film was obviously a Phoebe vehicle...and they seemed like they wanted this to be some sort of teenage coming of age drama inside a Ghostbusters film what with the rebelling against her parents, her having a rather bad attitude and feeling out of place everywhere. That story is really the only one that gets any real arc and for the most part is alright. You honestly don't even get to know anything about the Big Bad until I believe the hour mark of the film (over halfway) when Patton inexplicably just happens to know the story of the artifact. (cool animation there!) Ghostbusters 2 did a better job with Viggo the Carpathian than this film did with Barackus...or Baragus...or whatever its name was. And don't get me started on whatever the heck Kumail's story was...that was as hamfisted and thrown together as it gets.

I bet we will start to hear about script issues and Sony or the director screwing things up sooner or later. This wreaks of last minute changes and emergency editing. Things happened that were unexplained, and characters show up and disappear for no reason. The pacing seems off and it just feels like there is maybe deleted scenes that explain things but they were taken out because someone was worried and since Paul Rudd is popular make sure he has more screen time and HEY LOOK ITS DAN AYKROYD!!!1!1 Even the marketing made it seem like the studio had zero confidence in the film. (the trailers looked like the stuff for films that were being dumped not tentpole blockbusters) There was a lot of cool potential stories in the film...especially Winston and his Engineers which felt like it really should have been the spine of the film and maybe was in an earlier script. (they have all sorts of cool tech and learn all sorts of cool stuff about various ghosts...but 99% of it does not matter or get used even though tech issues is one of the major plot points!) They could have been a great way to keep the kids front and center and make the cameos seem less forced. Without spoiling any part of her arc there was easily stuff Phoebe could have done that would have moved the story better and still given her the arc she had and it would have let the film flow better. I honestly think one character was added to be her replacement as she goes on her journey which just wasn't needed. But honestly, what really ground the film to a halt a lot of the time was the cameos and the force feeding of Ghostbusters 1984. Some of it works, but most of it doesn't.

It feels closer to "Slimer and the Real Ghostbusters" than Ghostbusters.

My SO thought it was cute...but the plotholes were obvious. Even the positive reviews bring up the pacing and script issues. And I know I know its a Ghostbusters film...but you have to follow at least the internal logic of the franchise if you are going to play up the nostalgia and this does not...hell it can't even keep its own internal logic straight. The Big Bad should have won 45 minutes into the film before anyone even knew about it...and that isn't hyperbole.

Eta: I forgot Podcast was in Afterlife...still think he was wasted.
 
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All of us strangers, starting Andrew Scott and Paul mescal, is one of the saddest movies I’ve ever seen. A masterful portrayal of grief and lonliness
 
Happy Rex Manning Day!

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