The Return of the Ghostbusters

[Dog Pants]

Return of the Ghostbusters

This is a fan made film, so I wasn't expecting anything great, but we all know how big a fan I am of the Ghostbusters films so I wanted to take a look anyway. I'm glad I had low expectations, because it made it easy to ignore the slightly sub-par acting and dodgy 'tribute' lines, and allowed me to appreciate the great sense of humour and characters. For a fan made film, this is brilliant. As I said, the acting is a bit off in places, but two of the three main characters are pretty good and the bad guy is also quite good in an evil genius kind of way (which I think is deliberate - he puts on a cloak towards the end).

Visually the film is very good, comparable to a straight-to-DVD commercial film. The effects are clearly CGI, but they're pretty good for an amateur job. The packs look and sound spot on, which hooks right into the memories of the old films. The music is a mix of stuff taken from the original films and a bit of new stuff that fits in quite well.

The main appeal for me is that they captured the slightly goofy sense of humour of the first film, with the Denver Ghostbusters - a franchise of the Manhattan Ghostbusters led by Ed Spengler, Egon's nephew and protege - bungling their way through the story while attempting to look professional. References to the original movies (plus a few more - look out for Aliens and The Goonies to name the couple I can remember) are a little obvious for my liking but meant to be tongue in cheek and aren't too frequent.

The characters are great. Ed is the obvious comparison to Egon, and the link between the films, but the other characters manage to stay quite fresh with the drinking and fighting wiseass Neil and the stoneresque Russian Pavel.

The film's free to download here: http://www.returnoftheghostbusters.com

And here's the Youtube trailer for the curious:

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=as3P7Xuk2es[/media]

[buzzmong]

Ah, it's finished now. I came across this a while ago before they'd finished it and kinda just wrote it off, downloading now on the strength that you've enjoyed it Pants

[Dr. kitteny berk]

Just watched this. entertained me.