Wednesday 27 March 2024

REVIEW - Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire

 This review contains some spoilers



Having relaunched the franchise again with Ghostbusters: Afterlife, Jason Reitman and Gil Kenan return with what might be described as an episode of the ongoing Ghostbusters series. In spite of some negative reviews, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire has done well enough that it's likely we'll get a run of films, coming in every few years, continuing the paranormal exterminators' adventures. Kenan has said that he and Reitman have storylines ready to go for future movies. This, then, is basically the first regular episode after the pilot.

On the whole, I preferred Frozen Empire to Afterlife, for several reasons. First and foremost, this film was simply a lot of fun, something which seems so low on people's priorities for movies these days. Reitman and Kenan stated in interviews that they were going for the feel of an episode of The Real Ghostbusters, magnified for the big screen, and they absolutely achieve that. It's a funny, busy, silly adventure that still finds time for character work, like all the best episodes of RGB.

It massively helps that this film features a new villain, instead of the retread of the first film we got with Afterlife. Of course, it's understandable that a relaunch of the original continuity after decades would bring back the classic Big Bad for a rematch, but Afterlife reused some of those elements so slavishly it verged on a remake. Frozen Empire, on the other hand, gives us a brand new monster to threaten New York and the world.

Still, this film ostensibly ties in with the original's fortieth anniversary (although you'd have expected them to release it in June for that), and as such it has plenty of characters, ghosts and settings included as references to the past. While the Oklahoma setting of Afterlife was a breath of fresh air, it feels right that we're back in New York for this one (although excursions to other cities, state and even countries was par for the course on RGB). As with Afterlife, the bulk of the original's surviving core cast return. However, while in the previous film this was little more than a bunch of glorified cameos, here the characters feel more integrated into the story.

Winston and “Dr. Ray” benefit the most from this approach. Winston, now a hugely successful business, is now the owner of the firehouse and seemingly the Ghostbusters organisation itself, financing research and development while the new team get on with the everyday business of busting. Ray, on the other hand, is where he belongs, running his spooky little shop, helping out with research where he can and tenuously entering the 21st century with a new YouTube series on allegedly haunted artefacts. Ernie Hudson is a class act as always, wile Dan Aykroyd basically just is Ray at this point.

Less well served are Venkman and Janine, who come across as a little shoehorned in, but at least they have a reason to be there. Venkman gets to do his somewhat dodgy parapsychologist schtick in the service of the mission, while Janine finally gets to suit up, itself a much deserved reason to include her. Annie Potts seems to be having a great time, but Bill Murray comes across as running on autopilot. The final actor to return from the original is William Atherton as the hated Walter Peck, rather brilliantly now mayor of New York and still determined to shut the Ghostbusters down. He's great in the scenes he has, but he's a bit underused here. Still, it's a nice way to tie events back to the beginning without just repeating things.

It's the new cast who continue to impress the most. While it's very much an ensemble film, McKenna Grace still stands out as the star. Phoebe Spengler is now fifteen, becoming more frustrated and confrontational with her family, particularly when they acquiesce to Peck's demands and bench her until she comes of age. (Peck, like in the original, isn't wrong in his judgments, but he goes about enforcing them in a destructive way.) Phoebe gets a wonderful storyline to herself in which she bonds with Melody, the ghost of a girl who burned to death years before. Emily Alyn Lynn has a real presence as the ghost, whose friendship (and hints of romance) with Phoebe aligns with her increasing isolation and advances the plot.

Finn Wolfhard gives a solid performance as Trevor, now eighteen and struggling to prove himself as an adult and a Ghostbuster. Logan Kim is pitch perfect as Podcast, now working with Ray at the Occult Bookstore and managing his online activities. Kim has grown up a lot between films and steals a lot of his scenes with his infectious humour. A little underused is Celeste O'Connor as Lucky Domingo, who at least gets some great busting scenes interning for Winston's team.

Carrie Coon and Paul Rudd gives the film an emotional centre as Callie Spengler and Gary Grooberson, now an honorary Spengler, now a running the Ghostbusters street team as a couple. Rudd has some sweet moments as he slowly learns how to become a father to Phoebe, although he does get saddled with some awkward exposition to bring audience members up to speed with developments from the previous film.

Some of the best material goes to entirely new characters. Surprisingly essential to the story after a seemingly throwaway introduction is Kumail Nanjiani as Nadeem, a dropout looking for a quick buck who turns out to have a powerful secret hidden even from him. Nanjiani gets some of the funniest moments of the movie,carrying what could have been a ridiculous character by just running with it. I was a little dubious of James Acaster's casting, knowing him purely as a stand-up comedian rather than an actor, but his curt inventor character Dr. Lars Pinfield is a joy. Plus, it's good to have a Brit in there at the heart of the Ghostbusters team, heading up research and development for the new generation. Stealing his scene is Patton Oswalt as the enthusiastic occult historian Dr. Hubert Wartzki, although he is in the film for only a brief time. Still, he manages to make a long run of exposition highly entertaining.

When it comes to the various ghosts and goblins, Frozen Empire serves fans well. For celebratory purposes, Slimer is back, still hanging around the firehouse after Ghostbusters II and now hiding out in the attic, while Eleanor Twitty, the library ghost, has a brief cameo. The latter is pointless but fun and over in seconds, while Slimer actually has some impact on events, with Trevor having a fun little sideplot dealing with attempts to catch the critter. Of all the classic ghosts, it's Slimer who really had to be there, especially as he was absent from Afterlife. Surprisingly, given that this film follow up on the post-credits danger signs on the containment unit from the previous film and everything eventually breaks free, we don't get a ton of cameos from ghosts from the classic films. We do, however, have a lot of little Mini-Pufts running around; they're fun, but the joke's wearing thin with those guys. Time to melt them down.

There are plenty of new spooks, courtesy of Winston's new spectral research facility. Pukey, a revolting little spud, is no doubt included to be the new kids' favourite, while the simply but effectively realised Possessor makes for fun and threat as it jumps between various objects which it brings to life. Starting out with a major bust, in this case the thrilling car chase after the wonderfully realised Sewer Dragon, kicks the main body of the film off nicely, and it's satisfying that both puppetry and CGI are utilised together here.

The Big Bad for the film, the great demon Garraka, is a suitably threatening creation, an inhumanly thin, ghoulish creature with impressive horns. He's a striking image, and his power, to freeze people using their own fear, is enjoyably nasty. However, while I'm pleased that the film has considerable build-up to his eventual appearance, once he's there he's dispensed with far too quickly. It almost feels like we're missing an act, giving the film a rushed ending which badly affects its overall pacing.

Afterlife notoriously and controversially brought back the late Egon Spengler as a ghost, there to help and reconnect with his family. Here we have Melody, and while her motives are complex, she's another ghost who is very human in her thoughts and actions, rather than the monstrous manifestations we usually see. The majority of entities in these films have been godlike things far beyond humanity, virtually mindless creatures that never were human, or the ghosts of humans whose evil has made them monstrous in their afterlife. There's a lot more room for exploration here, to see more traditional ghosts who are intelligent, self-aware and altogether human, and the questions that raises for the Ghostbusters and their treatment of spirits. There could be some dramatic consequences there, along with the fact that, while they're praised as heroes at the end, the Ghostbusters and their new ally Nadeem are responsible for everything bad that happens in this film.

Altogether, Frozen Empire is good fun, and while it can't hold a candle to the original, it's a step up from Afterlife. Where it works best is in its original elements, and this is where the franchise needs to go next. While the old guard are better used here, this really should stand as the final handover to the new generation. The inclusion of the classic crew, the Spenglers and the new characters leaves this film (ghost)busting at the seams. The next film really needs to let the past go for good, focusing entirely on the modern team and more new ghosts for them to face. Let's really evoke The Real Ghostbusters and bring is some truly weird stuff.


Spoiler-y elements lifted straight from The Real Ghostbusters:

  • The possessed Ecto-1 and a haunted stone lion both appear in the first RGB season.

  • The possessed pizza brings to mind the pizza monster in the title sequence for the Slimer and the Real Ghostbusters iteration.

  • Phoebe temporarily leaving her body is not unlike the times her father was discorporalised/forced from his body in RGB.

  • Even the Mini-Pufts originated in The Return of Mr. Stay Puft, a comicbook collection from 1990.

Wednesday 20 March 2024

REVIEW: The Black Archive - Midnight by Philip Purser-Hallard

Obverse Books' Black Archive range is something of a marvel. I wouldn't have thought it was possible to find a book's worth of material to say about each and every Doctor Who story, but here we are, at the 69th volume. Philip Purser-Hallard (The Pendragon Protocol, The Vanishing Man, Of the City of the Saved...) delivers his fourth entry in the series with Midnight, analysing the 2008 episode widely considered one of modern Who's finest hours (or at least, one of its finest 43 minutes). It's even more impressive to create an engaging full-length piece on a single episode, although that this is even possible shows the depth of many of Doctor Who's 21st century episodes. Midnight itself is an episode that is crying out for a dissection like this, so it's surprising it's taken so long for the range to reach it.

In spite of episode's simple storyline and production, a consequence of the need to produce an episode cheaply and quickly before season four's big finale, it's a narrative filled with questions and room for exploration. Purser-Hallard delves into the traditions of the script, both televisual and theatrical, drawing fascinating parallels with productions both within the series (such as The Edge of Destruction) and without (Arthur Miller's The Crucible). Purser-Hallard analyses the social commentary within the episode, delving into each character's background, taking them apart to show remarkable depth for what, at first glance, may seem like sketched-in characters. He notes that the script's author, Russell T. Davies, picks out easily recognisable archetypes to populate his story, but that this adds depth and complexity without the need to spell everything about the characters out. Some of the analysis of the character names seems to be taking things a little far, though, seeing parallels that unlikely to be deliberate. Similarly, the seemingly counter-intuitive name for the planet and story, Midnight, was probably chosen for no deeper reason than it sounded cool.

Purser-Hallard takes a very writerly perspective on the episode, viewing it in context with the traditions of storytelling. As well as more contemporary forms of story, he adroitly links Midnight, with its nameless horror that steals the very voice of the protagonist, to fairytales and folklore. Even then, he brings it bang up to date by comparing it with the most recent Doctor Who episode, The Church on Ruby Road, with its own take on fairytale monsters. From a fan perspective, some of the most interesting parts of the book deal with the fiction itself. After all, with the possible exception of Listen, Midnight features the most obscure and unknowable monster of any Doctor Who story, simply asking for an essay discussing just who or what it is. Equally intriguing is the later section dealing with the Doctor's character in this episode, one which takes him to task for his many flaws; again, Purser-Hallard's essay reflects the story itself while also looking at it through the lens of the most recent Doctor Who episodes, in which David Tennant returned as an older, more refined version of his Doctor.

As effective as the main essays are, the part that was most informative for me was the appendix, which details the three stage productions of Midnight. This was news to me, and it was fascinating to read the differences between the productions in their approaches to performance and casting, backed up by interviews with some of the creatives involved. Altogether, a very strong entry to the Black Archive, giving the reader plenty to think about next time they watch this acclaimed episode.

Friday 26 January 2024

Television Heaven update

Here are all my Television Heaven articles and reviews since the last quarter of 2023 up to January 2024. Gradually picking up the pace as I slowly get back in the swing of the writing thing. We have modern and vintage telly from across the decades, beginning with the charming teen superhero series Ms. Marvel within the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Perhaps the best show on television right now, never mind that it's aimed at five-year-olds: Bluey. A surprise release late last year of the pre-Python comedy series The Complete and Utter History of Britain. More up-to-date is the comedy-drama that's swept the awards lately, Only Murders in the Building. For Hallowe'en I took a look back at the Steven Moffat's take on Stevenson's classic, BBC serial Jekyll. Most recently, I polished off my teaspoons and revisited a gem from my childhood, T-Bag. And finally, I brought my overview of 21st century Doctor Who right up to date.

Tuesday 2 January 2024

WHO REVIEW: 2023 Christmas Special - The Church on Ruby Road


Doctor Who
returns with its first Christmas special since 2017, also serving as a second relaunch of the programme following the sixtieth anniversary specials. While The Church on Ruby Road has a more magical, fantastical feel than most of Doctor Who previously, and the show has been modernised since Russell T. Davies first revived the programme in 2005, it still feels very much like his recognisable style of Doctor Who.

Ncuti Gatwa finally gets to have the role of the Doctor to himself in his first full episode, and he absolutely owns the role. Of everything in the episode, it's his Doctor that stands out as a new and exciting element. I can't say I'd ever expected to see the Doctor dancing with abandon in a club, but it fits Gatwa's version of the character, one who simply throws himself into every experience. It tells us that this is a brand new Doctor, unlike any we've seen before. (William Hartnell did go to a club back in 1966 in The War Machines, but he wasn't twirling around in his vest.) The new Doctor is charming, passionate, sexy, and full of the joy of exploration and discovery. As with “Rose” all those years ago, though, we learn about the Doctor through an ordinary girl, with the Time Lord kept at a distance for much of the episode until the plot cranks up a notch (the pacing is, admittedly, a little sluggish for the much of the runtime, with a great deal of time spent on Ruby's introduction and the Doctor's flitting about on the sidelines).

Millie Gibson (Coronation Street) is excellent as Ruby Sunday, our new companion. She's immediately a very likeable character, someone we're happy to spend time around on Christmas. Her character might have come across as a somewhat generic “plucky assistant” were it not for the additional detail of her status as an orphan and foundling, which itself could have been twee had it not been written and performed with such realism and nuance. A baby left outside a church on Christmas Eve is fairytale stuff, and while this fits with festive setting and the magical nature of the adventure, it wouldn't have worked if Ruby's life wasn't so mundane and believable. Not that this translates as dull: her adopted life is clearly busy and very happy, but it's not the fantastical story her origins might suggest, and her tears when she learns there's no trace of her birth mother speaks volumes as to a deeper sadness she's hiding.

For all the claim that he was now over his baggage following The Giggle, the Doctor is also barely hiding a deep loneliness and isolation that comes out when he reflects on his origins. Davies continues to make a virtue of Chris Chibnall's new mythology of the Timeless Child, with the Doctor confiding in Ruby that he, too, was adopted after having been found, an important link between them that is bound to be explored further in the upcoming series. As both of them are searching for more truth about their origins, it's Ruby who we'll no doubt learn more about, with the identity of her mother and the reason she was abandoned surely to provide an ongoing mystery for the upcoming season. All of this secondary, though, to the immediately tangible chemistry shared by Gatwa and Gibson when they're on screen together, and it's this that makes the episode work.

Making a gaggle of goblins the enemy for the special is in keeping with RTD's more fantasy-based direction for the series, picking up on hints dropped in The Giggle that all manner of things will be finding their way into the universe. The idea of goblins being behind accidents, nudging their prey into sequences of coincidence to bind them and season them, is a fascinating one, that at once feels straight out of folklore and part of Doctor Who's peculiar, time-bending universe. The goblin plot is very much a combination of classic fantasy films, with elements of Labyrinth and Gremlins (itself a Christmas favourite), although the Goblin King, in this version, is less David Bowie and more Jabba the Hutt. The goblins themselves are a stunning creation, a horde of creatures rendered with CGI and physical performances where required, while the King himself is a huge, physical puppet with real presence, a truly loathsome creature. The goblins' ship is a thing of beauty, straight out of the highest fantasy but no more ridiculous than physics-defying spaceships. For all the Doctor enthusiastically refers to this as a new kind of science, Ruby's right when she calls it magic, and perhaps at this stage, there's really no difference.

Then we come to the most controversial element of the special: the Goblin Song. The inclusion of a festive song goes back to Davies's earliest Christmas specials, but then they were background rather than central to the action. Christina Rotondo provides the gorgeous voice of the wonderfully-named Janis Goblin, singing the gruesome song of baby-eating with goblins excitedly dancing around her. It's a show-stopper, and easily the most Labyrinth-like part of the episode (although the lyrics are a bit more Mighty Boosh). It also fits with the goblins own brand of magic, where story and rhythm seem to be the driving force. So it makes perfect sense that the Doctor, having learned the language of the goblins' science, launches into a song-and-dance number himself to fight them. Frankly, when you've actors who can sing and move like Gatwa and Gibson, you want to make the most of them, but it works with the kind of story Davies is telling this time round.

The supporting cast is largely strong. Michelle Greenridge (Afterlife, It's a Sin) is very good as Ruby' adoptive mother Carla, but the stand-out is Angela Winter (EastEnders, Death in Paradise) as Cherry, Ruby's bloody-minded, bedridden, wonderfully flirtatious grandmother. It's clear that they make Ruby's life a happy one, with Carla, foster mother extraordinaire, the rock on which the family is anchored.

All this shifts when the newest foster child, baby Lulubelle, is rescued from the goblins and Ruby is taken instead, written out of time as the creatures use the web of coincidence to go back and snatch her away as a baby. The episode shifts from Labyrinth-cross-Gremlins to It's a Wonderful Life, as Ruby's absence entirely alters the dynamic of the Sunday family's lives. The effect is immediate, with even the colouring in the scene shifting as their home becomes less vibrant and comforting. We don't see much of Cherry in this scene, but she's clearly deteriorating. It's Carla, though, who's most visibly changed, having shifted from foster mum to 33 to the reluctant carer for “five or six,” all her happiness and enthusiasm lost. Greenridge really is excellent in this scene, showing a complete change in her character who is just as forthright and outspoken, but now embittered and aggressive.

Of course, the Doctor goes back in time and puts it right, dealing with the goblins in a rather brutal fashion (he's lucky he doesn't kill the baby with his actions – or are the rules of storytelling and coincidence such that he knows his aim will be true?) Again, the pacing is odd here, with the story slowing down considerably, and while there's an emotional heft to these scenes in Ruby's past, it feels like an epilogue, rather than the climax to the story.

Some inclusions in the episode don't entirely work. Anita Dobson (EastEnders) gives a broad if entertaining performance as outspoken neighbour Mrs Flood, but her character is so obviously written as “the big mysterious guest star” that it's awkward overall. Already everyone is talking about who she's going to turn out to be, and how she knows what a TARDIS is. The best answer is that she's just a busybody who's seen Time Lords comes and go in London over the decades – it's not as if the Doctor or any of the other renegades have ever been subtle in their travels. Davina McCall's inclusion is an oddity. While Davies has spoken about her series Long Lost Family as being a partial inspiration for the episode, her involvement as a fictionalised version of herself is clunky, and her acting ability is way behind everyone else in the production. Equally clunky is the scene with Barney Wilkinson as a policeman, which is clearly there because Gatwa was kept out of the main events for too long. It's a rather sweet scene, though, and worth including.

Mark Tonderai's direction is excellent, and the effects are uniformly impressive (you can see where that Disney money is going). While the pacing issues do impact it, there's plenty of incident and excitement, and yes, while it's often silly, it's Doctor Who on Christmas Day – silliness is the point. Altogether, it's a very fun introduction to our new Doctor-companion team. Based on this, they're going to be a lot of fun to watch together, which is the single most important thing to get right in this show. 

Observations:

  • Controversial theory to piss everyone off: Lulubelle is the Timeless Child and will one day grow up to be the Doctor. She was a little black girl in her first incarnation, after all, and the Doctor did say he loved the name.
  • Good to see the trans representation continuing, with Mary Malone playing Ruby's mate Trudy.
  • The episode was the third most-watched programme on Christmas Day according to the overnights, and the most-watched drama.
  • A tenner says we meet a younger Cherry in the upcoming sixties episode and she's after the Doctor.
  • The other goblins in the goblin band are apparently called Pixie Not, Bryan Fairy and Gob Dylan.
  • The mavity thing is still going. While I suspect it'll be dealt with at some point in the upcoming series, it'd be funnier if they just called it that from now on and never commented on.
  • The Doctor talks of his "long, hot summer" with Houdini. The Thirteenth Doctor had mentioned a "wet weekend" with Houdini, but as far as I recall, the Doctor's earliest reference on screen to having met Houdini was the Third Doctor in Planet of the Spiders. So it was the Pertwee Doctor who shagged Houdini.
  • This isn't Davina McCall's first appearance on Doctor Who. She provided the voice over for the futuristic Big Brother in "Bad Wolf." Given that absolutely everyone knows what Big Brother is, and Long Lost Family has run for over ten years yet I, and no one I know, had heard of it till now, shows how far her public image has faded. RTD's first run was aggressively on-the-minute, while now he seems to be lagging behind pop culture.
Maketh the Man: We've heard already that the Doctor will be wearing a new outfit in every episode, but he actually gets through three-and-a-half in this one alone, beginning with the brown checked jacket and trousers with orange jumper from the initial promo shots, followed by an orange vest and a kilt (with and without black leather jacket), and for most of the episode, the signature look of a long brown leather coat, orange-and-striped top and blue trousers, with a final change of top at the end. Looks like this main colours will be brown and orange, but everything gets a turn here.

Saturday 23 December 2023

Doctor Who: The Christmas Specials


Available now is my overview of all thirteen Christmas specials from 2005 to 2017, featuring the Tenth, Eleventh and Twelfth Doctors, each one rated for story strength and Christmassy-ness. A nice bit of nostalgic festive rewatching before Doctor Who returns to the Christmas Day schedules with the Fifteenth Doctor.

Read it now at Television Heaven.