Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021): ⭐️⭐️⭐️
This one took long enough to hit reasonable rental prices that we’d lost track of what the reviews said, so we weren’t sure what to expect, and after other recent attempts to resurrect old franchises that didn’t work out so well, weren’t terribly optimistic. Happily, we enjoyed this more than we expected to. It was amusing, the kids weren’t annoying, the effects nicely called back to the originals, and we appreciated that the plot picked up on a lot of the original film (for us, it wasn’t “too much fan service”, it was continuing the story). Glad we finally got around to giving it a shot.
(That said, I will continue to be annoyed that the whiny, racist, sexist, childish backlash against the 2016 film means we don’t get to continue that storyline. That I enjoyed this one and am now looking forward to the next one doesn’t mean I wouldn’t happily swap them out for a timeline where the 2016 film got continued instead.)