Reviews

--Possible Spoilers-- -I can't believe that's really a thing.-

The new Ghostbusters is a movie that pretty much every one knows the plot of at this point. Four women come together to battle a ghostly plague in New York City. On the surface, it's not a bad idea at all. With another set of actors or possibly different writers, it could have worked. There were several scenes this movie could have easily done without, and it would have been just as good of a movie, if not slightly better. Additionally, this movie suffers from almost everyone trying to be funny. There are very few "straight men" to balance things out.

The first portion of the movie establishes the main characters and how they come together. Kristen Wiig's character is shown establishing herself in a job that is not referred to at any other point in the movie, and way too much time is spent with this.

The middle of the movie goes pretty much as you would expect, with the crew busting ghosts and figuring out the details of what is a much larger plan. The climax is very well done, and a lot of originality was put in, along with nice nods to the original movie and cast. There is another scene at the end involving a rescue that does absolutely nothing for the story.

Of the entire cast, Leslie Jones was my favorite. Her character seemed to be the most believable.

I'm not sure what the process was for putting this together, but overall, the pieces didn't quite fit. It was gimmicky and predictable in some spots, and suffered from way too much mugging and goofing in others. There was very little balance in the group. In any group vehicle, there should be a nice balance of comics and straight men. You shouldn't have everyone trying to ham it up.

I was definitely disappointed. I wasn't disappointed comparing it to the original, which is going to invariably happen. I was disappointed in this as a stand alone movie. If they do a sequel, I hope they can put together a good cohesive script. The special effects are pretty, but a good story would be nice, too.

While I will attempt to avoid spoilers, I am flagging my review just in case.

This is essentially the second JJ Abrams vehicle I've ever watched. I saw a few episodes of Lost, but was never a fan. On the other hand, I wholly loved the Star Trek reboot. The casting was magnificent, and the chemistry of the characters is completely intact.

Having grown up with the series and the original movies, I have still managed to adjust to the alternate universe. I am a fan, and I wholly endorse the idea. Conceptually, it's wonderful to almost recreate the "What if" scenario from Marvel comics? What if Spock had a love interest? What if Captain Pike had lived? These ideas and more are all being explored in the new Star Trek universe.

As a franchise, one of the concepts that has always made is special for me is the plausibility. Within this universe, there are races and species of all kinds. It's a given that a starship with this special crew does what it does. The science is acceptable. Some of it has even become reality! This is where my love / hate shifts slightly to hate, but not completely. More like dislike with a bitter aftertaste.

I was transfixed while watching this movie. I saw women with hands to their faces during some of the action sequences, riveted to the screen. It was amazing.

****Spoilers follow*****

While I was on the fence about using Khan in this way, I was good with it. The fact is, when you have seen Ricardo Montalban in this role, it's hard to adjust to a new concept, despite how good the actor is, and this one was brilliant.

The movie started to lose me late in the game. At some point, instead of climbing the to the top of the mountain of action sequences, they should have known where to level off. In Star Trek II, the scene in which Spock saves the ship is wholly believable. In watching it, all one can do is just marvel at the scene. In the new movie, the saving of the ship is ratcheted up a notch as Kirk doesn't just race to fix an important component of the ship, he somehow knows where this thing is he is looking for, and manages to kick into place an object that I would assume weighs thousands of pounds and is mostly likely heavily bolted into place, even if jarred temporarily.

Having gotten past this, I was settling back in when Spock beamed down to chase Khan. Again, this was a good scene to start, and then it too went way over the top. Had these scenes been in nearly any other movie, I would be fine, but they just don't belong in star trek.

That having been said, the movie is still worth watching, and it's wonderful to see so much attention being given to this set of characters. I think the actors are all doing a phenomenal job, and the writing is top notch as well.

Whether you are a new fan or a long time fan, you'll find much to make you happy here. Unfortunately, if you are a long time fan, there are more than a few concepts here you're just going to have to overlook. If the next movie follows this pattern, I think I'll pass and just pop in a DVD of one of the originals. In this age of special effects and fast paced action sequences, it's nice to sometimes go back to a time when special effects enhanced a movie, they didn't define it.

And be prepared. If memory serves, this movie consists of a LOT of close ups, and more than a few lens flares thrown in for style. The lens flares are an interesting touch, but they work.

I would have rated this movie another star or two had it not been for the two scenes I mentioned. They really hurt an otherwise wonderful movie for me.

Terrible. Awful. Flawed. Haphazard. I can't think of enough adjectives to describe how bad this movie was. What was an interesting concept was chopped up and pieced together and released to theaters. Here is a sure sign of a bad movie; If, at the end, the characters have to summarize everything that just happened, then it's a bad movie. Characters change without reason, other events occur that seem completely unnecessary.

SPOILER ALERT----- I think a lot of scenes were written just because they'd make good film. They contributed nothing to the movie, and only added to the confusion. We find out the truth about the kidnapping. If this was the case, then why did we have the original scene in the house, and why did we have the scene involving the thumb later on if the kidnapper had no intention of cutting it off. It makes zero sense. If this kidnapping had been set up from the beginning, then those scenes make no sense to the story.

I feel like any given scene was only written to cover a loophole somewhere else. SKIP THIS MOVIE. There are a couple of interesting spots in here, but the movie as a whole just does not hold up at all.

POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT...

Having grown up with the original Superman movies, I was impressed on a number of levels with this movie. The actor playing Superman obviously studied Christopher Reeve's take on Clark Kent and did an excellent job emulating the speech and mannerisms. I would have liked to have seen more scenes with Clark instead of Superman, but that doesn't take away from the movie for me. I thought the story was detailed and very interesting, and the set design for this movie was second to none! It was visually breathtaking.

Now for some of my issues... Years ago my father pointed out as we watched an original superman movie, that you never really see anyone get hurt or killed. I can't remember specifically, but I know you never saw anyone get killed. This movie kills 3 bad guys. I have a problem with that. I also have a problem with a few liberties taken. As the plane carrying the shuttle continues to climb, it nears the edge of space, yet the tail continues to burn. With the lack of oxygen at this level, the flames should have been extinguished. In the scene where Superman stops the out of control car, he picks it up and sets it down. During the scene, the woman pumps the brakes and tries to turn the key, but the car won't shut off. All of a sudden it's off!? No no no.... bad bad bad... I thought the picture of him setting it down was a great touch. Did you catch it? It was a recreation of the cover of Action Comics #1!

And early on, try to read what you can of the scrabble board. I only caught one word, which was alienation. I think there are probably more worth checking on there.

My other issue is an early scene with Clark and Lois at the daily planet early in the movie. There is a guy that walks into the scene, but it looks like he's not supposed to be there, because he suddenly stops. He doesn't do anything, he just walks in and stops.

I still enjoyed this movie overall,and while I'm a huge Kevin Spacey fan, I don't know that he brought anything special to the role of Lex Luthor. I would have almost liked to have seen Gene Hackman give it one more go. I'll definitely see the next one! A-