Of all the cinema sagas, the Ghostbusters epic is the one that had the longest and most tormented relaunch phase. The progenitor film, directed by Ivan Reitman and created by Harold Ramis, both deceased, with Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson and Rick Moranis is from 1984, a jewel of yesteryear. There was a forgettable second chapter in 1989, then nothing until Legacy of 2021 which cleared the new generation of Ghostbusters, in practice the Spengler family, laying the foundations for the rebirth.
Strange, because the themes that the serial brings with it are more current than ever: the idea of cinema as a dream factory, a psychoanalytic flow of consciousness towards one’s fears and desirable healings, the idea of a multi-ethnic, solidarity-based, fire-fighting, no-business and no-war society, which first falls to pieces and then knows how to get back on its feet, linked to esoteric phenomena but, if necessary, also pragmatic and hasty. The minds of the splatter revival are Jason Reitman (Ivan’s son, screenwriter here) and the director Gil Kenan who, it is true, give in to rogue nostalgia, honoring the formula “a shot at the rim and a shot at the barrel”, but they also create an efficient quotation thriller with surreal twists, blockbuster effects and good metaphorical pages. In the first sequence we are in New York, in a torrid summer of 1906: when the police raid a club of idle gambling dealers they find the members of the company transformed into ice statues. The eyes of a sleeping idol in a brass sphere light up. An ancient deity waits for the right time to live again, but to do so he must first freeze the Big Apple. The ball ended up among the old furniture of the grandmother of the immigrant Nadeem (Kumail Nanjani), a type of stand-up comedy who would like to extract a nice nest egg from the antiques. The grandmother kept the thousand-year-old secret of the idol, while in the background the shadow of the original Ghostbusters, elderly but still smart, lengthens: from Ray Stantz (Dan Aykroyd also executive producer), who leads a laboratory on demonic possessions, to Venkman / Bill Murray and Winston / Ernie Hudson, who have laid down their weapons but not irony & joking. The new heroes are therefore the Spenglers, heirs of the late Egon Spengler by Harold Ramis: Phoebe, 15 years old, ghostbuster by vocation, looking for an identity (McKennaGrace), her brother Trevor, a handsome cartoon mess (Finn Wolfhard), mother Callie (Carrie Coon) and her new partner, Professor Gary Grooberson (Paul Rudd) who Phoebe finds hard to accept as a new dad. Nice group, close-knit, with proton rifle and combat van. The expeditions against the ectoplasmic monsters that crowd the New York metaverse they start from the fire station where it all began, which fell into disrepair and has now been restored.
The Spenglers’ 3D mission is thwarted by the dim-witted mayor who sees the Ghostbusters as an obstacle to his re-election and forbids Phoebe from going around shooting ghosts as she is a minor. The jumble has multiple endings, stagnates in the middle, farces in between Harry Potter And Fantastic animalsgets tangled, becomes a teen movieloses pace and finds himself with two sequences that recall the original fairy tale: the battle with the stone lions in front of the NY Library and the face-to-face between Venkman Bill Murray and “handsome grandmother” Nadeem who becomes a master of fire and joins the Ghostbusters. Oh, there’s also a parenthesis gender fluidwith the hipster Phoebe who trusts too much in a Pre-Raphaelite spectera blonde and kind peer who first betrays and then saves the day and the puppets.
GHOSTBUSTERS: ICE THREAT by Gil Kenan
(USA, 2024, duration 116′, Eagle Pictures)
with McKenna Grace, Carrie Coon, Paul Rudd, Emily Alyn Lind, Finn Wolfhard, Patton Oswalt, Kumail Nanjani
Rating: *** ½ out of 5 (pure nostalgia)
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