Monday Morning Critic – 8.29.2011 – Ghostbusters 3 and Worst Movie Ever

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Every Monday morning, InsidePulse Movies Czar Scott “Kubryk” Sawitz brings an irreverent and oftentimes hilarious look at pop culture, politics, sports and whatever else comes to mind. And sometimes he writes about movies.

You know what was one of the more depressing stories of the week? It wasn’t the fact that Worst Movie Ever actually expanded into theatres after selling one ticket the week before. Someone made a rancid film, called it a spoof of bad films, and got it released somehow. There’s actually a ridiculous trailer to it all:

That may have been a bit depressing, but what was more depressing was an aging actor clinging to the one last vestige of fame he still has: Dan Ackroyd pushing for another Ghostbusters sequel.

The main sticking point is the involvement of Bill Murray, or lack thereof, as my presumption is that no one will fund a Ghostbusters sequel without the involvement of Murray. He’s the only of the original four that’s maintained the same level of fame since then. It’s a much tougher sell to have a Ghostbusters film without his involvement because if you’re going to do the nostalgia kick for this franchise, which this decidedly is, you need to have the biggest star in it. It’d be like trying to relaunch Back to the Future with Christopher Lloyd, Crispin Glover and Lea Thompson but without Michael J. Fox.

Fox is still the key to that film in the same way Murray is key to the Ghostbusters franchise.

The fact that Ackroyd is pushing this so hard, despite the fact he has no say on whether or not it’ll be put into production, reeks of one thing: desperation. I get why he wants another film in the series, as it would give him a chance at reclaiming the spotlight one more time and give the franchise a sendoff that the second film didn’t provide and the first was intended for. But here’s the thing: do we really need another Ghostbusters film?

No, not really.

I think that’s why Murray is holding out on actually making the film. He’s moved on from that part of his career as Ghostbusters was a film that came out at a time when he was arguably the funniest man in Hollywood. And he rode the comedy train for as long as he could, transitioning to drama and never looking back. He doesn’t need to do another Ghostbusters film; I think that’s the one thing no one is getting at this point. If Murray really wanted to do another, to step back into the proto-pack thingie and take on ghosts, he’d do so without all the hassle. He’d negotiate a fair check, make a summer blockbuster and get his funny on. But here’s the thing: he doesn’t’ want to do anything like that.

He doesn’t but just hasn’t said anything yet. No matter how brilliant the script, Murray is done with that aspect of his career and all that is happening now is just posturing. He’ll never do another Ghostbusters film unless he gets Will Smith money and at this point that won’t happen. And here’s the thing that I don’t think Ackroyd gets right now: there’s minimal chance of that happening at the most optimistic viewpoint.

No one is going to pay Bill Murray anything that would resemble a Godfather type offer for a film with an uncertain market; nostalgia for cartoons is one thing but nostalgia for a film two decades past its expiration point is another. It’s not as if Ghostbusters locked itself into the American pop culture lexicon and stayed there. It’s good for VH1 retrospectives and the brief nostalgia kick every now and again but it’s not ingrained into culture. It was a pop culture success almost 30 years ago but there’s an entire generation who have minimal experience with it.

Murray is locked into the indie world and probably having more fun refining his acting talents and being in prestige pictures, with the occasional studio picture, than he would be revisiting old territory. I think Bill Murray would rather find the next Get Low than another Ghostbusters. And there’s nothing wrong with it.

A Movie A Week – The Challenge

This Week’s DVD – All God’s Creatures

One of the perks (or downsides depending on how you want to think of it) of being a writer on a pop culture website is that everyone has stuff they want you to plug for them. I imagine it gets worse the bigger you get, considering how many more requests I’ve gotten as the site has grown over the past couple years has increased exponentially. Most times people want you to hype their project out of the goodness of your heart, sending press releases and such, and the one thing I always ask for before I do a thing is for a screener. Why?

Because it gets rid of 99% of people who aren’t serious …. Mainly the types that think because they sent you something means you’re indebted to post it.

Thus I was sent All God’s Creatures, currently in indie hell right now looking to get distributed and playing the festival circuit. But they obliged and sent me a screener, which I give them props for, and thus in kind I opted to throw it in this weekend and see some indie horror.

The film has a fairly simple premise. Jon Smith (Josh Folan) is a worker at a coffee shop by day but hides a terrible secret: he’s a serial killer. When Delia (Jessica Kaye) wanders into his coffee shop, they strike up an awkward friendship. She’s got a troubled past and has resulted to being a Craigslist prostitute in order to keep a roof on her head. As they get closer, his instincts to kill her (he has a thing for killing really attractive party girls and prostitutes) clash with his burgeoning attraction to her. It leads to two divergent character paths.

He pulls away from her because of it, not wanting to kill someone he clearly has feelings for. There’s the monster inside him that he wants to hide from her.

As she tries to find a way to make a legal living, and get her sister out from under the roof of their evil stepfather, she wants to hide this from him.

The film essentially follows their paths toward one another, trying to hide who they really are. It’s one of the better of the indies I’ve been able to get a screener for recently but it suffers from its writing more than anything else. It wants to give us a serial killer who we hope gets caught and a cinematic version of Dexter Morgan from Dexter but with more of a hardened edge to him. He’s much more … realistic than Dexter in that regard. He’s the typical serial killer from all the profiling that’s been done over the years; alone, takes trophies, et al. But the problem is that if he’s supposed to be someone we like, he makes an awful hard time of it.

For Jon it’s supposed to be about the thrill of it, the insatiable dark urges he has, and it comes out as more anti-woman than anything else. Jon seems to just hate women as a whole for some reason as opposed to being a serial killer with dark urges that just happen to come in the urge of killing women. It’s kind of a problem when you’re going with a romance angle; both people may be very flawed but there has to be something about them that makes us want to see them together. It’s the crux of any romantic comedy, or romantic drama, in that no matter the people there has to be something redemptive about both of your leads or it doesn’t work.

In other words we have to like them.

And it’s kind of hard because neither character is nothing more than a character archetype (the killer needing redemption in the form of a woman who understands him, the hooker with the heart of gold. It’s an interesting premise that just doesn’t quite deliver; this is a film screaming for a professional screenwriter and a first rate cast to remake, because there’s something here. I just think when you do a great concept on the indie level that sometimes not having first rate talent behind it can be a big curse.

If you’re on the festival circuit and this is playing, it’s worth the view. I do have to say one thing to Matt Jared and Sid & Nancy Productions, the people behind the film. They just didn’t send a disc. They sent an entire piece on it with enough information to really get a feel for the film before I put the disc in.

What Looks Good This Weekend, and I Don’t Mean the $2 Pints of Bass Ale and community college co-eds with low standards at the Alumni Club

Apollo 18 – A “found foootage” film …. In SPACE

Skip It – If you want to see a film about crazy things happening in space to humans, just rent Alien and Aliens again. It’ll cost less and be more entertaining; this isn’t screening for critics in Chicago and usually that means something.

The Debt – Helen Mirren, Tom Wilkinson and Ciarin Hinds are former members of the Mossad who claimed a Nazi doctor was dead when he wasn’t. Now they have to finish the job.

See It – It’s a remake of an Israeli film of the same name which was of some quality, apparently. The film has been having its release date changed for almost a year, though, and usually that means something.

Shark Night – A bunch of teenagers get killed by sharks.

Skip ItPiranha 3D was pointless mediocrity and this’ll be the homeless man’s version of that film.

Scott “Kubryk” Sawitz brings his trademarked irreverence and offensive hilarity to Twitter in 140 characters or less. Follow him @MMCritic_Kubryk.