Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021)

Because they (Ivan Reitman's son Jason, who writes and directs the movie, and a group of producers that includes Dan Ackroyd) are trying here to make a movie that appeals nostalgically to kids of the 80s but also enthuses a new generation of millenials about the Ghostbuster franchise (after the vapid Melissa McCarthy one pretended the original didn't exist and aimed itself solely at the pre-teen market), the set up of Ghostbusters: Afterlife is necessarily laboured with the movie adopting the deliberate pacing of, say, the original Christopher Reeve Superman movie to build links between the ghostbusting action in 80s Manhattan and that in 2021 smalltown Summerville, Oklahoma where young Phoebe and her brother Trevor stumble across Ghostbuster research into ghouls called Zuul and Gozer.

★★★☆☆

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Spies Like Us (1985)

They cheat during their CIA entrance exams - in laboured, unfunny fashion - but even so two boobs are sent out into the field in Afghanistan and Russia because, unbeknownst to them, it is hoped they will distract the enemy from the actual nuclear missile mission happening elsewhere, in this comedy with punchlines that come first, longwinded setups that come second, and that has Dan Aykroyd and Chevy Chase at the height of their comedy movie careers in 1985 (Aykroyd fresh from 1984's Ghostbusters; Chase squeezed this in between Fletch and National Lampoon's European Vacation in 1985 and The Three Amigos in 1986), both presumably too busy to scrutinise or veto subpar projects (Aykroyd, the co-writer, should've gone over the script again) or perhaps they wanted to do any and every old thing that came along before the world tired of Chase's unchanging schtick or twigged that Aykroyd is more irritating than funny.

★☆☆☆☆     

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Tammy (2014)

The makers of this road movie (husband-and-wife team Ben Falcone and Melissa McCarthy, who needed outside voices to check their married groupthink) probably intended a typical Melissa McCarthy gross-out comedy crossed with the sort of quirky familial drama of Little Miss Sunshine, Captain Fantastic or even something bruised and tender like Young Adult, but the result isn't funny nor touching, just loud, shrill, and dull, with the would-be family drama that develops as dropkick Tammy (McCarthy) and her alcoholic grandmother (Susan Sarandon) hit the road landing as lifeless as the jokes.

★☆☆☆☆

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