I really hate that I feel the need to excuse myself with this Ghostbusters article. I went through about 19 revision of this article. In them, I took many stances: aggressive; reasoned; insulting; defensive; apoplectic. Those angles were not about the movie; they were about the people who would like to discredit anyone who talks about this particular topic. I decided I was going to do this straight, neglecting the feelings of the potential audience. This is a movie review based on my point of view, and I don’t feel like I need to qualify myself.
It is okay to speak your feelings, even if people want to insult them.
When you try to control the narrative by insulting those against your narrative, you lose the argument.
Here goes: the new Ghostbusters movie is…average. And if the original 1984 Ghostbusters had never existed, it’d still be an average movie. The problems with this movie have nothing do with my feelings for the original movie, nor do the genders of the main cast members factor in. In fact, I feel that the movie is just an average movie that tried nothing more than to ride the coattails of an extraordinary franchise, and used gender-bending as either the excuse or the protection.
Whether you agree or not, the fact is that these four extremely talented ladies were hitched to a cart that was supposed to do all the work for them. Ghotbusters is supposed to be a killer IP; Sony apparently thought that anyone pulled into its umbrella would shine regardless. I think that’s a shame, because the ladies that headline Sony’s latest excuse to cash in could have handled their own movie vehicle way more capably, assuming they were given a chance to.
Melissa McCarthy and Kristen Wiig have proven that they have the talent to make a production work; I favor Wiig’s body of work specifically because of her work on The Martian (my favorite movie of 2015 bar none!) and Arrested Development, yet I love what both Wiig and McCarthy managed in Bridesmaids. Also, Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones proved in this movie that they are ready for a primetime that doesn’t involve SNL. Ghostbusters did not suffer because of them; they were the movie’s brightest spots. I enjoyed their banter and camaraderie, even though they didn’t spend all that much time together.
Things just seemed to crumble at the base. Director Paul Feig and co-writer Katie Dippold were essentially tasked with an impossible request: to make a reboot of Ghostbusters that is viable to a new audience while sating the old franchise’s fans. As talented as they are, they couldn’t win in this context. I would have loved to see Feig and Dippold stretch their legs with something new. Ghostbusters was an anchor that they had to fight against from the very beginning. Even if they wanted to – and I believe wholeheartedly that they wanted to – the task was just too monumental.
All that being said, it was still an enjoyable movie. It was enjoyable the same way many people find popcorn flicks in the summer enjoyable. Hey, it’s a movie, it’s not terrible, and it got me out of the house; I guess it’s ok.
Let’s start with the movie’s big weaknesses. I really did enjoy the depictions of the new paranormal investigators…except for Kevin. In my opinion, fighting the stereotype of the dumb blonde woman is not helped by introducing a dumb blonde man, which Chris Hemsworth’s Kevin truly was. The stereotype is stupid for either gender. Why go for the low-hanging fruit and take a stab at men along the way? He might as well been called Brüno!
The main villain, Rowan North (Neil Casey), was weaker still. He had no other motivation other than, “everyone bullied me, I’ll show them!” That’s not much of a stance there, tiger. I had my share of bullies in my time; I didn’t resort to harnessing the undead to torment the living as a way of getting even!
(Then again, maybe I would have done so if I knew how…forget it, Rowan sucked!)
Other than Kevin and Rowan being weaker than my left ankle (hint: Jell-O), I was thoroughly unoffended by the extreme averageness that exuded from this movie. It was a popcorn flick in its barest sense. The four Ghostbusting ladies were perfectly fine in their roles, but they did not do anything to distinguish themselves as anything more than what the movie said they were. I did like that they tried to flesh out their existence more, showing them and their implements evolving. Kate McKinnon as Jillian Holtzmann has to be my favorite in terms of character; she was overconfident and brazen in the ways you would expect a misunderstood Ghostbuster to be!
Am I upset I saw this movie? No, I am not. It was better than other overhyped movies (i.e. X-Men Apocalypse), and it did nothing to ruin my memories of the original source material. Was it great? It was great in its averageness. Does that count?
