Category: William Atherton

GHOSTBUSTERS: FROZEN EMPIRE

By Marc S. Sanders

When you make a new installment in a long-celebrated franchise, going on forty years, you have to reinvent the base material to keep it fresh and new.  I think the Jurassic Park/World movies are fun, but don’t they also feel like carbon copies of each other by this point?  I mean how much can you broaden the adventures that come with dinosaurs? The roar, they run, they eat.  

With the Ghostbusters films, there’s more flexibility in what you can do.  You can replace Saturday Night Live players with a fun, lovable leading man like Paul Rudd and he can team up with some brainy kids to fend off ghosts in the best movie jungle there is, New York City.  However, why drain all of the comedy out of the burger?  

The ongoing teenage troubles of the latest reinvention of the Reitman/Ramis/Aykroyd property hinges on so much teen angst that ghosts and ghouls only appear after we’ve endured one Breakfast Club moment after another.  Sadly, there aren’t many spooky critters roaming around the metro area anymore.  Who you gonna call? Doesn’t feel like we need to call anybody, really.

Here’s the pyramid food chain of Frozen Empire.  1) Sad, frustrated teens 2) Inevitable cameos of the celebrated heroes of the first two movies 3) Ghosts.  This movie needs to reexamine its priorities.  

The main storyline is carried by McKenna Grace as Egon’s granddaughter Phoebe who is grounded by Walter Peck aka Mr. Pecker aka Dickless (William Atherton).  I’m referencing what this guy is remembered as because the movie fails to do so. Phoebe is a minor.  Therefore, she can’t hunt after ghosts and thus builds a relationship with a sixteen-year-old friend named Melody (Emily Alyn Lind) who appears in the form of blue supernatural lighter fluid.  Melody died in a fire.  Sooooooo…much of these two young ladies’ sad sleepover conversations populate the film.

Then there is Dan Aykroyd returning as Ray to enlighten some back story on the main monster we can expect to appear in the third act.  He’s performing like an R.L. Stine adult in a second-rate Nickelodeon kid’s picture though.  Ray Stanz was always the guy who had loony science on his mind, but the comedy of the character shown through with Aykroyd’s boyish naïveté.  Remember how excited Ray was to go down the fire pole or when he thought up the giant marshmallow man?  What about when he talked back to the pink slime in the first sequel? It was downright ridiculous and now Ray is a midlife crisis depressant.  

Bill Murray is collecting a paycheck again.  The character is the same with the comedian’s special sarcasm, but if he’s in this film longer that ten minutes it’s a lot and he utters no more than five lines.  He serves one purpose to Frozen Empire – to be in the advertisements and draw a crowd.  Paul Rudd and Bill Murray have done two Ghostbusters and an Ant-Man movie together and somehow, they still have yet to share a great exchange of dialogue.  For the third time in four years, Rudd and Murray seem to be unaware that they are both members of SAG working on the same project.  If I ever need to deliver the argument that there is a lack of good writers working today, I’ll use these missed opportunities as an example of what I mean. 

Annie Potts wears the nerdy glasses, but I don’t remember a thing she says.  Ernie Hudson as Winston plays the financier of the modern Ghostbusters, but there’s nothing special going on with him.  Even the librarian from that fantastic opening of the 1984 film appears.  He talks to Ray for a moment and that’s it.

Why are these people here?  Just so we can say “Uh!  Look who it is!!!”  C’mon!  Surely, there’s something better to be spun here.

Part of the plot involves the threat that the storage container of all the ghosts ever captured over the years will be breaking down soon and set all of the paranormal prisoners free.  That’s brilliant!!!  Yet, why doesn’t the movie capitalize on that????? We are threatened by this terrible scenario over and over with music of impending doom and glances at a digital monitor.  Can the thing just break already?  

We see the slimer green ghost blob under a pile of candy wrappers in the attic.  Not bad.  Where are the other ghosts we had become familiar with?  Remember the cab driver, or the angelic apparition that seduced Ray in his sleep?  Where are they?  I’d rather see these guys than a boring Dan Aykroyd in a jean jacket.

The best parts of Frozen Empire occur in a turn of the century prologue with frozen characters in a formal dining room.  There’s also a fantastic pursuit following that scene showing all the cool tricks of the updated ECTO mobile as it races through the streets chasing after an eel like monster.  During the sequence a drone trap launches off the roof of the hearse!  That’s awesome.  The last good scene occurs midway when one of the stone lions outside the NYC public library comes alive. Everything else in this sleepy picture is very bland, however.

The original, and even Ghostbusters II and the Paul Feig lady comedienne reinvention worked as comedies like the franchise became known for.  I wasn’t crazy about those two sequels but at least the ghosts were the punchlines.  Now the main ghost needs therapy and so does the lead character.  It’s so dreary.  

Where’s the funny?  There is no longer a silliness or loony tune appeal to these monsters.  As well, there are no more jokes to tell about The Big Apple.  Don’t forget that Ghostbusters showed us that ghouls can pop out of drainpipes, drive cabs, gorge themselves on room service meals and hot dog stands and even cause the ghost hunters to wreck a posh banquet hall all in the service of the greater good.  The well of laughs that stem from New York cannot be all dried up just yet.  There are subways and buses to haunt. Broadway theatres. Cell phones. Parades. Ferrys. Morning News Shows.

I left Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire feeling morose and melancholy.  When I got home, I knew for the first time that Zuul could never be living in my refrigerator and suddenly I was as sad as Melody and Phoebe.  If this movie is depressing, then is it me or is it the Ghostbusters of today?

THE SUGARLAND EXPRESS

By Marc S. Sanders

Steven Spielberg’s second film, and first full-length theatrical release, is The Sugarland Express.  It’s inspired by real life events that consisted of a convict couple making their way to the Sugarland estate, located in Texas, to reunite with their toddler child living with foster parents.  Goldie Hawn played the mother, Lou Jean, who easily springs her husband, Clovis (William Atherton) from a pre-release penitentiary.  Clovis only had four months to go before a full release.  Once they’re out, they hijack a police car with the deputy driving and make their way across the state for Sugarland.  The rest of the police force, along with out of state authorities, are hot on their tail.  Pitifully speaking though, this becomes a long, drawn-out slow car chase.  It’s a pretty dim-witted story, but because it’s based on fact, well, some thought it’d make for an interesting two hours on film.

Unlike Spielberg’s first film, Duel, I didn’t find much inventiveness with The Sugarland Express.  If anything, it was likely green lit following what the director accomplished so well, at such a low expense, with his first film.  Car crash/car chase movies were also becoming trendy in the early ‘70s with Steve McQueen’s Bullitt becoming such a pioneering film of incredible automobile stunt work.  The French Connection would go on to win Best Picture a few years later with a centerpiece car chase to hang its hat on as well.  The Sugarland Express however is quite silly and very inferior to those pictures, though.

I was impressed with the infinite number of cars at Spielberg’s disposal and many of them get bashed up and crashed up in so many ways.  Yet, I grew tired of the novelty too.  The stakes didn’t seem so high with this film.  It is perhaps a film of its time.  After so many on the run pictures that were made with much better sophistication in the decades that followed, Spielberg’s film often feels unconvincing and unintentionally silly.  A funny moment occurs when Lou Jean needs to finally pee following miles and miles of endless driving.  The outlaws force the police led by Ben Johnson, in a nothing role with a big cowboy hat, to bring in a port o potty in the middle of an open field.  Cop cars are everywhere.  It’s clear as day outside.  Yet no one takes the opportunity for aggressive action.  Lou Jean gets to relieve herself.

As the pursuit carries on, Lou Jean and Clovis become celebrities, and crowds of townsfolk approach the car they occupy to lend them money and good wishes and even a pet pig.  Silly stuff mostly, but just not very amusing to me, and Goldie Hawn, who is normally a natural and adorable comedienne, is not very endearing here.  Lou Jean mostly screams in her redneck dialect and as a former beautician, styles her hair in the back seat applying endless amounts of hair spray to irritate Clovis and the deputy.

I didn’t find much camera work to impress me from Spielberg either.  I appreciated one moment in time however.  As the characters manage to hide out in an RV parking lot overnight, they watch an outdoor screening of a Roadrunner cartoon short out their back window.  Wile E Coyote falls victim to one of the Roadrunner’s tricks, and Spielberg captures a close up of Atherton with a foretelling expression of doom cross over his face.  It’s a nice moment that brought me back into the film, but then the ongoing themes of the film return thereafter.

I don’t care if it’s a true story.  I don’t care how ridiculously absurd it all amounted to.  The Sugarland Express was just noise for me.  Other absurdist stories of the 1970s, approached their subject matter better.  Films like Dog Day Afternoon whereas the ordeal continued to prolong, so did the mental exhaustion and desperation of the characters.  I’m afraid Spielberg just didn’t capture any of that here.