If only. That is my takeaway from seeing Suicide Squad. It could have been great, if only. It would have been great if only. Despite the films best efforts, Suicide Squad is still a very entertaining movie. But there are some glaring flaws that consistently detract from the experience. What is shocking is how good the movie is considering how obvious some of its missteps are.

Suicide Squad does not get off to a good start. It opens with some highly artificial character introductions that interspersed with Amanda Waller outlining her Task Force X plan. It is poppy and high energy, but even in just the context of the first 20 minutes it doesn’t fit. While it quickly introduces the team, it doesn’t really give them a context. Deadshot is a hit man with perfect marksman ship who was caught by Batman. Harley Quinn is the Joker’s lady friend who was caught by Batman. El Diablo is a pyrokinetic, Killer Croc is a human Crocodile, and Captain Boomerang is a murderous jewel thief with a signature weapon. Then about 15 minutes later is introduces everyone again. It feels like they chopped up the first act to get to the team faster and to make it feel more like the trailers. It ends up feeling disjointed and unfinished.

After that, though, things really pick up. The team is quickly pressed into action, as a mystical force is attacking the fictional Midway City and that requires their skills and their expendability. Things start to feel more organic. Initially their mission is to rescue a high value individual from the city, afterwards they must try to stop what they are told is a terror attack.

Nominally the villain is the Enchantress and her brother. She began as part of the team, an extra-dimensional entity that had possessed archaeologist June Moone and controlled by Waller, who has her heart. But she manages to break free and attempts to destroy human civilization. While Enchantress is the antagonist that they actually fight, but the true villain of the film is Waller, whose arrogance and disregard for other people endangered the world. There is nothing redeemable about here.

Other than the choppy, nigh incomprehensible opening, the other big flaws are the back half of the Squad and the Joker. This is the Deadshot, Harley and El Diablo show, the other team members are just there to fill out the ranks. Captain Boomerang steals every scene he’s in, but he doesn’t really have anything to do. The same is true of Killer Croc and Katana, who doesn’t even get her own intro. Even Flagg, the leader of the team and the person who should be the emotional center of the movie, gets pretty short shrift. All of that really isn’t a big problem, but it certainly feels like the movie would have been better if only they had done a little more with those characters. Especially Flagg, who was in a relationship with Moone. He has an emotional connection to the mission that is largely ignored for the bulk of the film.

The Joker stuff is harder to reconcile. I don’t hate Jared Leto’s take on the character, despite the reports of his obnoxious, to put it lightly, antics on set. He plays the Joker as some sort of trashball gangster, like a green haired Scarface. But even though the character is in all of about 10 minutes of the movie, that feels like about twice as much as he should. His storyline with Harley, where the Joker spends the movie trying to free her from prison and then the squad, goes nowhere. It’s just kind of there, distracting from everyone else. Harley is one of the best parts of the film, but the stuff with the Joker doesn’t add anything to her portrayal. It is a wasted, pointless subplot. In only they could have provided a reason or some resolution to that plot it would have add some much need depth to the movie.

Yes, the movie stumbles out of the gate. It wastes time on bad characters and plots and ignores more interesting ones or at least the chance to make other characters more interesting. But despite all of that, the film still delights. There is enough emotional connection to the characters to make the viewer care and the action is largely fun. It isn’t quite earned with El Diablo refers to the team as his family, but that thought is not echoed by anybody else in the film. It feels like a movie that bears scars from reshoots and editing, but the core of the film is still a strong action movie.

***1/2

No movie this summer has stirred up the internet manchildren like the Ghostbusters remake. The absurd tantrum being thrown about how they replaced men with women made it hard to have any sort of rational discussion about the merits of the film. Pathetic cries of it destroying viewers’ childhoods, dead face serious such complaints, sounded in comments sections whenever the movie was mentioned. Doing my best to ignore all that garbage; how was the movie? Pretty damn good. Not really a scratch on the original, but highly entertaining in its own right. It wisely isn’t a straight remake of the original, but a new story about people hunting ghosts. It isn’t the best or most well considered story, but it is very funny and visually interesting.

Ghostbusters stars Kristin Wiig and Melissa McCarthy as childhood friends and scientists who had a falling out over a book they wrote about the paranormal. McCarthy’s Abby publishes the book against Wiig’s Erin’s wishes, which causes some strife, but soon has them teaming back up, along Kate McKinnon’s Holtzman, when they discover a real ghost. They work to discover what is causing an outbreak of ghost sightings, soon teaming up with Leslie Jones’ Patty, who works for the MTA.

It is nearly impossible to watch this film and not compare it to the original. It is inevitable. This version of Ghostbusters is strongest when it differentiates itself from the previous film and weakest when referencing it. Most of the stars of the 1984 movie make cameo appearances, to moderate degrees of effectiveness. The scenes in the movie that most closely resemble the original are mostly inferior. Those and the cameos mostly serve to remind the viewers of the other movie they could be watching. The bulk of the movie, though, charts its own path and that is largely an enjoyable one.

Most wisely, the new team is not just made up of gender swapped versions of the old characters, they are all original creations. There is no direct equivalent of Peter, Ray or Egon here. Abby, Erin and Holtzman are all their own characters. While the first two are fine characters, characters whose friendship forms the emotional heart of the film, the real standout is Holtzman. She has a touch of Egon’s mad scientist in her, but hers is more focused on the mechanical side of things than his more theoretical work. Patty, the slightly late addition to the team, is a more essential part of the team than Winston was in the first movie, and actually gets a chance to be funny.

Those differences in character help to drive the plot. These Ghostbusters are much more focused on the equipment they use. Holtzman, ever tinkering, comes with much more inventive tools that just proton packs. They get grenades and shotguns and even more fun stuff. Instead of being concerned with running a business and making money, they are more concerned with scientific respect.

I would say that this is a funnier movie than the original, though the jokes come at the expense of the plot. The original is a movie with a clear through line and much of the focus is on the main conflict between the Ghostbusters and Zuul. The villain’s scheme and the plot in general, is much less considered in this new version. That lack of focus gives the characters a lot more time to just be funny. For the most part, it succeeds. Ghostbusters (2016) is a very funny movie. Not every bit hits, but much more hit than miss.

It does kind of falter in the third act, when it tries to go big but hasn’t spent the time building up the threat or the stakes. It just kind of throws them out there at the end. And while it does feature on thoroughly satisfying CGI fueled action scene, the big threat at the end is almost an afterthought. It would have been better served with a smaller climax, but it instead went for the unearned big one.

Ghostbusters (2016) is a fine comedy. Likely not an all-time classic, but certainly a welcome addition to this franchise. It breathes new life into something that had been dead for more than twenty years. It is imperfect but highly entertaining.

***1/2

This has been a wet fart of a summer at the movies. It started good, with the very solid Captain America Civil War, but that gave way to the flaccid and the bloated. There have been some passably entertaining films, but nothing I would call great or even very good. Luckily, the end of July is here to save this lackluster summer. It might very well be lowered expectations due to a few lackluster months, but Star Trek Beyond is right now a strong contender for best movie of the summer.

My lack of any deep care for the Enterprise crew or their adventures allowed me to have a fairly positive take on the Into Darkness when it first came out, though even in that review the more thought I applied to the film the less I liked it. My opinion has not improved in the intervening time. While there is no way for Beyond to escape some sense of pandering, with it still featuring the original crew, it lacks Into Darkness’s morbid feel of rooting through the bones of the old stuff instead of creating anything new. If anything, Beyond feels like an episode of a Star Trek TV show. A particularly action packed episode on steroids, but it still has that kind of adventure of the week sort of feel.

Star Trek Beyond sees the Enterprise crew’s shore leave interrupted for a rescue mission in uncharted space that goes seriously awry when they are suddenly attacked. As the ship is destroyed, an occurrence so frequent in the films that it lacks any effect, the crew is split up and they each have to work to try to get everyone freed from a powerful foe intent on destroying the Federation for some old slight. It is not exactly going boldly where no one has gone before, but at least it isn’t going where it has famously been yet again.

This is far from a perfect movie. The opening half hour is particularly unfocused, especially when the crew is first split up. The villain, as is becoming tradition in this series, never has his methods or motivations properly explained. Also, for a franchise that is often on the more thoughtful side of science fiction, Beyond pays the barest lip service to any serious science fiction before going full on action nonsense. Really, the villain feels like the biggest missed opportunity in the film, since once he is explained it helps tie the rest of the movie together, but that information would have helped a lot better earlier in the film.

Still, even with those complaints Star Trek Beyond is a blast. It gets the characters very right, with each member of the crew having a chance to shine and perfectly what captures what has made these characters so popular for so long. The cast they got for this reboot has always been one of the films’ strengths, and that is still true. Most of the primary crew can and have headlined films all on their own. Director Justin Lin is a master of using a big cast and making the viewer feel the camaraderie, as seen in his work on the Fast & Furious movies. And while the action is ridiculous, it is internally consistent. No nonsensical twists just to have twists, but a story that builds on its own logic.

Star Trek Beyond is not likely to go down as an all-time classic. It is no Mad Max Fury Road. It is an engaging and well executed action movie; thoroughly entertaining is not ground breaking. After a summer of franchise non-starters like Warcraft and ambitious wrecks like X-Men Apocalypse, the satisfying competence of Star Trek Beyond is a complete delight.

****

The BFG’s biggest problem is that the story doesn’t fit on the screen very well. Spielberg and the effects team to a wonderful job creating The BFG and making him and his world look real enough, but the structure of the story doesn’t quite work as a movie. It ends up feeling distracted and scattershot. That is not unlike the how I felt about the book years and years ago. The BFG may be a true and faithful adaptation, but that doesn’t make it a good movie.

The technical achievement of the character The BFG is worth noting. While it doesn’t ever quite look real, it does look good. The look of The BFG and his house are believable in that totally unbelievable dreamlike way that permeates the movie. The best part of the movie is early on, when BFG is hiding in the dark streets of London, making his cape and horn look like trees and light posts in silhouette. It shows some wonderful inventiveness. Mark Rylance infuses the characters with a charming vulnerability as he catches dreams and mangles words. While he is great, Ruby Barnhill does good work as Sophie. She is smart and adventurous. The pairing works well together. The only other characters that get much time are the rest of the giants, who are evil man-eaters with names like Bonecruncher and Gizzardgulper. They are giants both to Sophie and to BFG, who they bully. There are some great scenes that play with the three levels of size between the characters, with the bad giants being at least twice the size of BFG and he being about 10 times bigger than Sophie. It is visually interesting, at least.

It is too bad about the scattered, episodic nature of the plot. I know that is kind of a shot at Dahl’s original, but at the risk of having everyone tune me out, I’ve never been the biggest fan of Dahl or the BFG. It starts well, with Sophie spying BFG at night and him taking her away to Giant Country. They have some adventures and misunderstandings at his house before he takes her dream catching. Up until this point the movie has been largely great. A little lacking in drive at times, instead content to meander around to give BFG a chance to say funny words. The third act, though, is a real let down and killed my interest in the movie. Without spoiling anything, the duo’s plan to deal with the man-eating giants is supremely disappointing.

It ends up feeling a lot like Favreau’s The Jungle Book from earlier this year. It is a wonderful looking film, but the visual magic doesn’t translate into wonder. It looks nice, sure, but the movie itself is edgeless and dull. Comparing this to past Spielberg films like E.T or even The Adventures of Tintin shows its lack of substance. Outside of the silly words, fart jokes and technical wizardry, there really isn’t much to The BFG.

**1/2