Well...I finally found a reason to hate ATC.
...It caused Plinkett to finally jump the shark. About 75 of them.
Plinkett just made the #1 mistake of a comedian. He put his anger over his sense of humor. The whole reason Plinkett's reviews worked in the past was the witty juxtaposition of this murderous old guy taking mainstream blockbuster movies down a peg or two. He went after movies that had a lot of hype around them but proved disappointments. And occasionally he'd give a wink to the audience, showing he also knows how screwy he is. But with this ATC review, all I'm getting is arrogant fanboy rage toward a movie that he was never going to like to begin with. Plinkett has completely lost the self deprecating quality that made his previous reviews so amusing and original.
If anyone enjoys this review, it's because you too are angry. Not because it's funny.
Nor is it accurate. For Plinkett to compare Abby to Ray and Erin to Venkman leads me to question his fandom in the first place. Abby is the Venkman, the assertive one who rubs people the wrong way, and who urges her best friend to go into business and not be afraid of ridicule. Erin is the Ray, the more low key one who takes her work seriously but is also concerned about her reputation. Hello, Venkman even teased Ray about always being concerned about his reputation! And no, Erin shouldn't be all that respected at her workplace because clearly neither were Ray or Egon. The whole point was that they were underdogs who didn't follow the rules! (That's assuming ATC is even following GB84 that close to begin with, which it isn't). Even if you dislike ATC, this is not up for debate. That's the problem with a lot of these Internet critics, they think the only qualification they need is "liking movies." But they don't really understand them.
I'll go a step further.
Plinkett has no business commenting on Ghostbusters (1984). His shtick is to show off his allegedly keen knowledge of storytelling with such rudimentary phrases as "protagonist" and "arc." That works for a fairly straight forward movie like Star Wars. But GB84's charm has always been that it deliberately, and successfully, broke with many of those writing conventions. Plinkett has never even tried reviewing such outlier films, often brushing them aside as exceptions to the rules he holds so dear. In other words, he's far out of his league here.
Plus he makes the at this point extremely annoying blanket statement that the humor in GB84 is "dry and sarcastic." Yes, some of the characters are dry and sarcastic and it works great. But others are not, and it also works great. If GB84 was entirely dry and sarcastic it would be a very different movie. This "dry and sarcastic" obsession is simply fanboys and girls wanting to appear all erudite and stuff while still enjoying mainstream entertainment.
Notice I haven't even tried to defend ATC. Whether you like it or not is beside the point. The point is the irrational resentment that fans continue to have towards this one random movie, and how it's done nothing but cloud their judgement. And they're STILL griping about whatever future plans Reitman has in mind. At this point, fans are the only reason this franchise wouldn't continue. This goes all the way back to the whining over GB2. Meanwhile so many lesser franchises will continue unabated. It's not right, people.
Fanboys and girls will like this review because it speaks to their own anger. But it brings nothing new to the table; frankly, Plinkett never has. It's a case of monkey see, monkey do, about a year too late. It failed to speak to me as both a Ghosthead and a Plinkett fan. Oh well, I'll go watch Ghostbusters II now. Sorry, RLM, you're not forgiven for that review, either.
"You forgot the first rule of fanatics. When you become obsessed with the enemy...you become the enemy."