37 years ago, “Demon Mowers” was engraved in the depths of the children of the 80s. The film is marvelous to reflect the spirit of the period in a plot that has bound together non-conformism, dubious business entrepreneurship and a supernatural fantasy.
Bill Murray, the prominent star in anarchist comedies such as “Club Riot” (Harold Ramis, 1980) and “Put a Stripe on the Strip” (Ivan Reitman, 1981), played the character of “Mowers” leader Peter Wankman. More a sarcastic cynic than a serious supernatural scientist. Dan Ackroyd (who also served as co-screenwriter) was the enthusiastic and childish Ray Stanz, and Harold Ramis (second co-screenwriter) as Egon Spangler the brilliant and restrained inventor of the warfare and capture technologies of the supernatural beings. They were joined by African-American actor Ernie Hudson as Winston Widmore representing “The Ordinary Man.”
In the spirit of the 80s “The Mowers” contained some problematic situations in the values of contemporary political correctness, the most prominent of which is the scene of oral gratification that Ray receives from a ghost, and some sexual innuendos passed over the children’s heads (“The Key Lord” meets Mrs. “The Gatekeeper”). These were performed with fine comedic timing, lots of successful improvisations and the spirit of fuel-fueled cocaine that served the production. In short, a classic.
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From “Demon Mowers: The Life After”
Moving on to other mediums – TV animated series, computer games, and a variety of merchandising of clothing and toys, “Demon Mowers” remains a significant presence in the American childhood world of the decade. In cinema, however, they failed to capture the “shine in the bottle” again. “Demon Mowers 2” (1989) shuffled financially and failed critically, and for about a quarter of a century attempts to advance with the third part were unsuccessful, largely due to Bill Marie’s unwillingness to cooperate. In 2014 Harold Ramis passed away and it seems that this has shattered the dream of seeing the remaining actors reunite for another film.
But, like ghosts, successful intellectual property is something that never completely dies in Hollywood. “Demon Mowers” (Paul Page, 2016) used the dubious strategy of booting while changing gender. Quite a few elements are brought back from the original plot, with a cast that was based primarily on SNL comedians (Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones) and a reinforcement by Melissa McCarthy. The poor result mainly included improvisations that may have made the crew laugh while filming but did not work in the movie theater. Adding guilt to a crime was also condescending to fans of the original who were accused of loathing the film because of its misogyny.
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From “Demon Mowers: The Life After”
“Ghostbusters: Afterlife” (Ghostbusters: Afterlife) is ostensibly trying to fix. He exhibits an unspeakable reverence for “Demon Mowers,” a film that worked so well precisely because it did not take itself seriously. This pose is the basis for trying to develop a new film series for a new generation of viewers. It’s certainly possible that the intentions of the screenwriter-M = May Jason Reitman (“Juno”) were good, he is the son of Ivan Reitman who directed the two films “The Demon Mowers” and now serves as the producer of the current film, but the result is almost as bad as ” The Demon Mowers. “
“Life After” focuses on the idea of family and intergenerational continuity. The central emotion to which it is directed is not humor with sparks of subversion, but sentimental indulgence. During the attempt to milk as much emotion as the climax does morally wrong things. Out of a desire to “respect” the film functions primarily as a fetishistic pornography of what has been lost in the 37 years that have passed since the original. For every child of the 80s who sheds tears over the memories of his lost childhood, there will be quite a few viewers who will shy away from the manipulation that the film performs.
The model is the successful TV series “Strange Things”, but while it does a “homage” full of a bit of 80s fantasy-horror movies, in “Life After” there is a focus solely on a single film. Every detail in ” The Demon Mowers “, every object, sentence, supernatural being, impromptu gesture or spontaneous joke gets to resonate in the current film. It happens throughout the film, but reaches a ridiculous peak in the last third.
In the opening scene, an attack of supernatural power takes place on an isolated farm in Oklahoma. The onslaught is stopped at the cost of the life of the person whose face is not revealed. This is, we will soon understand, Egon Spangler (the character played by the late Ramis), and now leaves the tattered farm to the rest of his only flesh – his daughter Kali (Carrie Kun).
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From “Demon Mowers: The Life After”
The daughter did not know her father who was immersed in his mysterious work, so she is full of anger and shows disinterest and even contempt in his life project. Because she is impoverished she brings her two children to the farm, in an attempt to find out what can be sold to make some money (beyond this act throughout the film she does not appear to be making a living or trying to make a living). Her instrumental attitude to her father’s legacy is everything the film purports to contradict but in practice repeats. It is the cynicism of trying to find value in leftovers, without effort to produce new value for yourself.
The eldest son is Trevor (Finn Wolfhard who plays “Strange Things”) who, like his mother, is completely indifferent to his grandfather’s legacy. He will start working at a fast food restaurant in the nearby town of Summerville, while trying to cruelly court Lucky (Celeste O’Connor) two years his senior. Despite Trevor’s indifference to science and knowledge, he’s quite easily able to repair the ‘Acto 1’ car – the iconic ‘mower’s car lying in a state of contaminated junk in a warehouse on his grandfather’s farm.
The 12-year-old daughter Phoebe (McNa Grace) is a scaled-down version of the grandfather. A genius girl who is proficient in a variety of fields, and articulates the same semi-robotic dryness that Ramis demonstrated in the role. Despite the rather disgusting cliché of “The Genius Boy” Grant gives is a point to the film’s credit. She does a good job given the plethora of plot and character development issues. Despite Phoebe’s declared social disabilities, she soon befriends an Asian boy, an annoying sage known as a “podcast” (Logan Kim), named after the podcast on supernatural topics he records.
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From “Demon Mowers: The Life After”
Gary Gruberson (Paul Rudd), Phoebe’s science teacher, turns out to be a fan of “The Demon Mowers” and someone who is very familiar with their plots in New York in the ’80s, and the technologies they used. He and Phoebe, and later Trevor, “Podcast” and Lucky, will begin to trace the reason Grandpa Egon moved to the remote farm. The things they will discover will be directly related to the mentioned sources of threat of the first film.
In the first two thirds “After Life” is likable, but does not provide laughs comparable to the original. It has one scene, quite successful, of a wild chase through the streets of Summerville for a low-ranking ghost. The plot is essentially “Find the Treasure” with each time the grandchildren find another detail that appeared in the first film – the “Acto 1”, the uniform, the wind trap, the PKE meter, and the proton pack. Each of them is positioned visually and musically as if it were the revelation of the sacred objects of pop culture. Middle-aged viewers should be moved by these moments and by the fact that the film introduces their children to the objects they remember from childhood. It is not at all certain that the children will be convinced that there is a bargain here.
In the final third, as the supernatural threat progresses toward its climax, all the plot details from the first film are awkwardly and often very arbitrarily compressed. Thus, for example, the presence of the giant marshmallow man reappears in the current film as little marshmallows people jumping from marshmallow packets at the Walmart branch.
The real climax can be guessed by anyone who goes through the full list of actors participating in the film. In theory it should be exciting, but it is done in a rather forced and not well written way. One of the actors who will appear in this part (and it’s easy to guess who it is) looks like he was brought to the set at gunpoint. The children’s figures are pushed aside and become secondary for the benefit of those who are supposed to satisfy the adult audience. The problem is not with the presence of someone who reluctantly agreed to participate, but with someone who could not even refuse to appear in the film, and yet was dragged to him from the grave. Even if there was goodwill behind the scenes, “Life After” transcends itself as a demonstration of the sick evils in cinema whose whole purpose is another commercialization of nostalgia.
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