Smart and smart boys and girls, but not repellent; wise but friendly; mildly mischievous, though never hooligans; shy but not sad. Mothers who, in the absence of the father, take care of their children with strenuous effort and hearty affection. Dionysian spirit. Fantastic ideas for a fantastic world, which they said verbatim in Gremlins. Tenderness and fun, adventure and merriment, education for life without the need for sermons and from experience, even error. Hope, fun and ideally Kaffir substance. Special effects at the service of the story and the characters, not the story and characters at the service of the special effects. Seductive fuss and absence of bombast. Personal traumas carried with the smile that, despite everything, life can be a party.

The best youth cinema of the eighties is back with Ghostbusters: Beyond, rebirth in the form of a sequel to the saga created from the script by Harold Ramis and Dan Aykroyd, and from the direction by Ivan Reitman, with two films from 1984 and 1989 (the second, much more discreet), and reborn with a somewhat more discreet production. uneven of 2016. The architect of the new banquet is Jason Reitman, son of Ivan, who sucked the original tapes in his own home, and who is also not just anyone in the profession but the director of the excellent Juno, Up in the air and Tully. Reitman’s operation, in the midst of successive emuls from the paradise of children’s and young people’s cinema of that decade, has only one precedent in terms of the level reached: the magnificent Super 8 (JJ Abrams, 2008). To that revitalizing lineage belongs the new ghost hunter, this time starring kids – the two grandchildren of Ramis’ character – and not adults, although the original protagonists have a punctual and exciting presence. As if the boys and girls of Los Goonies and ET the alien they would have encountered the green ectoplasms and the mythical gatekeeper, mounted on the tuned Cadillac Miller-Meteod and armed with the proton generator. The resurgence of the ultimate supernatural comedy.

Reitman, along with Gil Kenan, has composed a fabulous script, especially in its initial two thirds, those of the presentation of characters, appearance of the conflict and first experiences with ghosts. Of course there are fun nods for connoisseurs of the eighties (humorous appearances by Cujo and Chucky), and a certain nostalgia for the past, particularly in the exciting final part around the figure of the late Ramis. But Ghostbusters: Beyond (ugly title, by the way) is a completely autonomous film thanks to the fine quality of its dialogues, the lavish composition of the situations and the youthful charisma of its interpreters. Mckenna Grace and Fynn Wolfhard are superb, and their characters are drawn by talented hands, the ones that combine insight, naturalness and charm in a teenager. Along with them, the no less sympathetic Carrie Coon and Paul Rudd, and the fabulous discovery of the hilarious Logan Kim, direct heir to the Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Los Goonies.

The photography, the coloring, the texture and the soundtrack are drawn in the line of what Amblin Entertainment productions supposed in the eighties, but without the film being seen and experienced as a worn copy of these, of something that it will never come back. Those masterpieces of our sentimental education are unrepeatable, because neither they nor we are the same. But this new approach should be a party for those of us who dreamed of cinema then, and for the new generations who have inherited that sensitivity.