Let's hope you are right. Cos that shows me not much story to be interested in (bad person has evil plan...Did they gender flip Evo Shandor too?) and the laughs weren't there.
But I liked The Heat (and seem alone in that among family and friends.)
Ghostbusters 2016: Talk about the movie(s).
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Let's hope you are right. Cos that shows me not much story to be interested in (bad person has evil plan...Did they gender flip Evo Shandor too?) and the laughs weren't there.
But I liked The Heat (and seem alone in that among family and friends.)
There are plenty of comedies that have dramatic aspects to them, however that does not mean they are dramas. For instance: a man is trying to come to terms with his war experience and whether he can become a functioning person again. He boards a plane that will lose its crew and test his abilities and his sanity. Sounds like a fantastic Oscar worthy drama if I wasn't describing Airplane!. Dramatic elements in a comedy do not mean dramedy.
I also tend to get suspicious when an individual spends months "dissing" a particular film, breaking down everything they don't like about every rumor, assuming the worst about every aspect of the film, tying in even the slightest echo of something that impinges on their world view with the idea that the film will be full of things promoting a "social agenda" or what not, then they shockingly hate the trailer and use it to confirm every bad thing they have ever thought about said film. That's not opinion, that's self-fulfilling prophecy.
Because the particular person was not a fan of either the filmmaker, or the genre, or the particular film series itself.
To be fair, Airplane is a parody. Different rules apply, and the execution is such that almost every scene and story is there to set up a joke. Ghostbusters does not work that way. There are plenty of scenes that are purely dramatic and move the story, in fact the story doesnt work without them. There are almost no heavy comedy scenes that exist just for the sake of comedy. (the few that did were cut.) of the comedy heavy scenes, every one twists to the ongoing drama (Lewis party springs to mind) its all in the execution and approach. It's something you see more and more in the eighties, especially in horror films, and then of course there is Scream.
And using a simplified sentence to describe a film can make anything. 'on the run from the man she thought she loved, a young woman escapes to the solace of her family....only to confront the dark secrets of their own hidden past....'
Slasher? Or 'How to Make An American Quilt'? (a beautiful film that is so feminine it could probably make a man grow ovaries if put on loop in a Clockwork Orange scenario. I quite liked it oddly)
'A supernatural being comes to earth, and tragedy for one woman follows....' Horror? Or City of Angels with Nicolas Cage and Meg Ryan?
Ghostbusters knows it's roots (Abbot and constellation meet the mummy etc) but Aykroyd deliberately did not write it as a straight up comedy. All that stuff in there is, for want of a better word, real. The closest it comes to silly is stay puft, and he probably kills hundreds.
(another thing I often think about in relation to a modern ghostbusters, is how to stay with its themes in a post 9/11 new York. I even wrote a synopsis for how to do it to an extent. I mention this because it is a new York film and an apocalypse film)
To be
Yes it can, that's why just saying Ghostbusters has "lives at stake, horror scenes,... child abduction" glosses over the fact that those elements are there to serve the story, not turn the movie into a dramedy. And saying Airplane is a parody and does not count is moving the goal posts. Almost all comedies have some aspects of drama. Still doesn't make them dramedies.
Airplane is a parody. It deliberately takes an existing form, then Apes it for comedic reasons. Airport 71 etc. It derives a fair chunk it's comedy from sending up those familiar concepts in an absurdist framework. There is a difference between that and Ghostbusters, in that Ghostbusters is not using an established framework (did we even know what a parapsychologist was in films before it? The quantum mechanics stuff was cutting edge back then.)
The only way that would be moving the goalposts would be because of my use of Naked Gun as an example. I should have found a better one. Police Academy? Stripes? I dunno, find a comedy. That one.
Elements of drama, yes, the element called 'a story', but Ghostbusters, and others like it have the drama front and centre, the comedy is almost, but not quite, secondary (depends greatly on the cast and how much funny is in the mix, not to mention levels of absurdity....look at Aykroyds earlier work. 1941...Stripes...Blues Brothers....this is a departure in that at no point does Ghostbusters stop taking itself seriously. It's dramatic line is constant, and even fridge monsters and giant marshmallow men are deadly serious. It's not the only film of its type, but dramedy is as good a one word term as any. It's a comedy that is too scarey for young audiences. Call it a horredy if you like. A scifiedy. Or better yet, think of something like Buffy, it's descendant in so many ways, and tell me that isn't a dramedy. Or as we call em over here 'comedy drama's)
Not since chaplins day has so much effects work gone into a 'comedy' in all likelihood.
Yes I agree that Buffy could be considered a dramedy. But the level of drama in Buffy is higher, by far, than anything in Ghostbusters. Nothing like the seriousness of the Buffy episode The Body is in any scene of Ghostbusters.
Perhaps the confusions is in using the word dramedy. I'm not denying that the original movie is not a joke a second laugh fest with not moments "drama," but dramedies usually consider themselves dramas with comedic elements. For some reason comedies with dramatic elements don't usually fall into the same category.
Perhaps the confusions is in using the word dramedy. I'm not denying that the original movie is not a joke a second laugh fest with not moments "drama," but dramedies usually consider themselves dramas with comedic elements. For some reason comedies with dramatic elements don't usually fall into the same category.
I had a similar discussion with a person about Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove, where it had dramatic elements but it wasn't a dramedy at all. Neither was Buffy. The best example of a dramedy was Gilmore Girls.
I think even when writing and filming it though, (ghostbusters, not The Body. Which is unique in Buffy even to be fair.) it was approached as a scifi/fantasy film (which fits under drama) with the laughs coming from the cast and the performance. Only one character in the whole film is written and played as a straight comic character (Louis) and it intentionally goes for that hybrid nature all the way through the film. The same is true of its sequel, and even a fair chunk of the cartoon series was less about laughs or Saturday morning high jinks. (I blame Jms. Babylon 5 was almost as funny a sit com as Red Dwarf sometimes......)
The darkest the first Ghostbusters gets is with a variety of paranormal borderline sexual assaults, but the second...I would say finding your baby on a ledge, or in traffic, or outright kidnapped from you to be essentially sacrificed is pretty damned dark, possibly as dark as The Body, once you look at the fact it's only the surrounding film that lightens those moments a bit, whereas The Body is deliberately devoid of any lightness within the episode....within Buffy as a whole though? (let's try not to think about the later seasons, it's like different show. Enjoyable, but damn depressing) It's not a black comedy, it's not a sit com as such (TV only really, and the best ones cross that drama line really well.) but given how totally straight the whole thing is played...Yeah it's a comedy Drama.
Coming back to the reboot thing in relation to comedy drama's (in the case, comedy slashers) Scream 4 was an absolute masterclass in talking about that.
I hope this new Ghostbusters is good. The trailer hasn't filled me with hope, largely due to things that don't seem to be the result of a bad trailer. And if not....well, I can hope for a better quality reboot next time around.
I would say Strangelove is a satire. Comedy comes in different kinds after all, and the film is totally political.
I would consider that almost a subset of Drama though. And the romance in Ghostbusters is fairly front and centre...Though that's true for many action/adventures too.
Which made the original film so good. There are elements shared in that classic comedy.
This conversation took an interesting turn, but who's to say the new film won't have similar dramatic elements the original film had? Paul Feige has gone on record stating he's infused this film with a lot of horror elements as well. For all we know what we see in the trailer (comedy wise) is the exception and not the rule.
I certainly think the scene of the girls walking down the street with all kinds of ghosts around has the potential to be played pretty straight.
I certainly think the scene of the girls walking down the street with all kinds of ghosts around has the potential to be played pretty straight.
I agree. And the stakes don't dictate what genre a film is.
Falling Down is a drama (and could qualify as a dramedy in my opinion, it is quite funny in places.) It's about a guy not being able to deal with his life anymore and ruining the day for a few other people.
This Is The End is a comedy, and centers around the destruction of the entire world as we know it. Death, dismemberment, demons, and dicks.
Genre can be a slippery little sucker.
I agree. And the stakes don't dictate what genre a film is.
Falling Down is a drama (and could qualify as a dramedy in my opinion, it is quite funny in places.) It's about a guy not being able to deal with his life anymore and ruining the day for a few other people.
This Is The End is a comedy, and centers around the destruction of the entire world as we know it. Death, dismemberment, demons, and dicks.
Genre can be a slippery little sucker.
The execution matters. That's why I said 'scenes with' instead of just talking about the stakes in plot or story terms. It's almost like the porn argument (if a work is intended to cause arousal as it's primary function yadda yadda)
A comedy Drama usually has two functions and balances the two. I would also suggest genre is different thing. Science fiction is a (broad) genre, that could be comedy or drama for instance. There are lots of hybrid film types (fiddly when we use French words in a media context so we can use English ones that mean the same thing to imply something different) 'Basic Instinct' is a soft core (porn) thriller famously, and leads to a glut of the same through its success.
It's an interesting subject.
Falling down is basically a black comedy. (different again from a comedy Drama)
Yes. I hope that is the case. But the trailer hasn't shown that, and the comedy wasn't exactly singing for a lot of people either (I had two maybe three chuckles, and one of those was tempered by the level of Tom and Jerry stereotyping on display. Wig/hat was my only clean laugh, so Rayboot With egon hair...holtzmann I think? Is my current only hope for the film.) My bigger concerns are about the tone and execution. Did I mention the stripes look awful? They needed Trinny and Susanna to advise.
You have to have Stripes. In honor of Bill, Harold, and Ivan's history.
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