Ghostbusters (12A) Empire, Odeon, ABC ***
IF there's something strange in your neighbourhood, who ya gonna call?
Filmmaker Paul Feig.
The hugely successful director of Bridesmaids, The Heat and Spy applies a gender reversal to an effervescent remake of the 1984 supernatural comedy about a quartet of parapsychologists, who make a living capturing spooks in New York City.
Nostalgia oozes like ectoplasm from every glossy frame of this special effects-laden Ghostbusters, including cameos for most of the original cast and repeated bursts of Ray Parker Jnr’s infectious theme song.
“I ain’t afraid of no ghosts,” deadpans one familiar face and it’s certainly true that there are few jumps in a script co-written by Feig and Kate Dippold that awkwardly marries spectral scares with twisted humour.
The monstrous Stay Puft Marshmallow Man and greedy green ghoul Slimer play their part too.
Actress Melissa McCarthy, the director’s lucky talisman, is in fine fettle, effusively trading quips with co-stars including a scene-stealing Chris Hemsworth as the team’s hunky male receptionist, Kevin, whose chest measurement in inches exceeds his I.Q.
“You know an aquarium is a submarine for fish,” casually remarks the beefcake in one of his cerebral interludes.
Ghostbusters affectionately harks back to the series’ glory days before the creative misstep of the 1989 sequel.
Melissa McCarthy and Kirsten Wiig rekindle their Bridemaids on-screen chemistry, with colourful turns from McKinnon and Jones, and merciless self-mockery from Chris Hemsworth.
The script papers over gaping holes, including the absence of a backstory for kooky arch-villain Rowan, with spectacular action sequences and pop culture references like when the team claims a ghost flung a man out of a window and an incredulous cop replies, “You mean, like Patrick Swayze?”
Presumably they are saving a pottery wheel seduction involving a topless Hemsworth for the sequel.
Ice Age: Collision Course (U) Empire, Odeon, ABC **
THE creation of the universe wasn’t the result of a Big Bang, divine intervention or some other scientific miracle.
It was the consequence of “something much dumber” according to the plodding fifth chapter of the computer-animated saga co-directed by Mike Thurmeier and Galen T Chu.
Ice Age: Collision Course posits that Scrat the calamitous squirrel was the unwitting catalyst for the solar system as we know it, setting off a chain of cosmological events in his relentless pursuit of a tasty acorn.
If the presence of a rodent at the controls of a flying saucer in the Paleolithic age seems a tad random, that’s indicative of a script that thaws out plot strands and characters from earlier instalments and forlornly hopes for the best.
The film opens with Scrat inadvertently propelling a giant space rock towards the third rock from the sun.
Ice Age: Collision Course relies on old tensions between friends and family members to provide the fifth film with a burp of dramatic momentum that quickly dissipates.
The prospect of a giant asteroid impacting earth and wiping the evolutionary slate clean sounds like a blessing for this family-friendly franchise.
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