Ghostbusters

Let's just get rid of all of it.  Let's just throw away all the hype, the controversy, the comments, the Internet flame wars, the division, the diehard fans saying how this one movie has somehow destroyed their childhood, the people who have had some kind of bizarre personal vendetta against this film, and the creeps who have made discouraging and downright misogynist statements about the people involved.  Let's all be adults, and take a look at what this remake of Ghostbusters really is - A mediocre movie that, were it not for all this overly inflated attention, would hardly be a blip on anyone's radar.

I tried to be supportive of this movie, I really did.  The director is Paul Feig, who has done a lot of comedies I've admired, including Bridesmaids, The Heat and Spy.  The movie stars bright talents like Kristen Wiig and Melissa McCarthy, both of whom I admire, as well as Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones, both from Saturday Night Live.  With this kind of talent, you would expect a movie that would know how to set itself apart from the 1984 original, and create a new comedic vision.  However, like a lot of spectacle-based films, the actors find themselves constantly drowned out by the special effects.  Wiig and McCarthy look uncomfortable and downright unhappy in some scenes, while McKinnon's "oddball" character performance rubbed me the wrong way, and Jones seems to be playing a walking stereotype who adds little the film.  As for the effects themselves, they are nowhere near special enough to deserve drowning out these talented women.  A lot of them look as realistic as a Saturday Morning Cartoon, and many of the ghosts themselves seem like they would be right at home in 2002's forgettable live action Scooby-Doo movie.

What happened here?  The behind the scenes stories seem to suggest that there was quite a lot of turmoil on the set, as the actors and director could not get a handle on the material.  It shows in every way.  Here is a movie that is never confident, and seldom funny.  The four leading women stepping into the shoes of the paranormal exterminators don't have the easy chemistry that Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, the late Harold Ramis and Ernie Hudson had back in the day.  Yes, 1989's Ghostbusters II is probably just as disappointing as this film is, but the actors were trying their hardest to breathe life into the material they were given.  We don't get that sense here.  The women at the center of the film seem like they barely know each other, let alone their own characters, since they are given little material that allows them to play off each other.  Wiig's Erin is the "straight woman" of the group, McCarthy's Abby is lead ghost specialist who does all the research into the paranormal, McKinnon's Jillian handles the tech and generally acts like a weirdo just so the character can have something to do, and Jones' Patty feels the need to scream most of her lines for some reason.  There is something simply off here.  You don't put a cast like this together, and then give them the most basic of characteristics and interaction.  You let them loose, improvise, and sell this stuff as hard as they can.  Instead, they seem bound and strangled by the script co-written by Feig, along with Kate Dippold.

The plot of the film is at least new and not borrowed from the original film, but it's hard to get excited when you realize how slapdash and lazy it is.  Basically, there's been a spike in ghost sightings in New York City, and it's all the work of Rowan (Neil Casey), an angry and reclusive man who has been bullied all his life, and finds a way to retaliate by building a device that can bridge the gap between the world of the dead and the world of the living.  Why is he doing this?  The movie never gives us any information other than he's angry at the world for teasing him.  How did he learn to bridge the gap between the two worlds?  Supposedly he got the knowledge from a book on ghosts that Wiig and McCarthy wrote a long time ago.  How did he get the material to build his doomsday machine?  No idea.  Why does no one at the hotel he works at as a janitor notice that he's building the device in the basement of the hotel itself, when the device itself seems to take up the space of an entire room?  Also not explained.  You know, it's become a common trend in summer blockbusters that the villain is often the weakest aspect of the film, but this takes it to new levels of just plain laziness. 

So, the four women who make up the new Ghostbuster team up to stop him, but are not successful, and soon the entire city is overrun by those cartoony ghosts.  Certain people also start getting possessed, such as Chris Hemsworth, who plays the secretary to the women.  His sole character trait is that he is very handsome, but incredibly stupid.  How stupid is he?  He doesn't know how to do his main job, which is to answer the phone.  For most of the movie, he exists for cheap laughs at the character's expense over how dense and idiotic he is.  In the third act, he suddenly gets to be the villain for a while when he becomes possessed by the lead spirit.  Why is he targeted by the ghosts?  Well, Hemsworth is an expensive actor, and you're not just going to hire him simply so he can blunder and fumble around like a doofus.  Not that it matters anyway.  When he does finally get to play some part in the plot, he is immediately ignored for an overblown and unimpressive action climax where the Ghostbusters are attacked by killer parade balloons and uninspired ghosts.  The final 20 minutes or so of the film is not exciting, thrilling or funny in any way.  It simply feels like you're watching hundreds of millions of dollars get burned right before your eyes.

There is something so cynical about this attempt to revamp the long-dormant franchise for new fans.  It's a nearly two hour corporate product devoid of imagination, true humor, and purpose.  There's not a single frame that feels inspired, or like it needed to be made outside of the fact that it was a filmed deal.  The movie is never more desperate than when it trots out the stars of the original film for very brief cameos that not only are not funny, but seem lazy.  I guess our mouths are supposed to drop in shock when a taxi cab pulls up, and the driver is played by Dan Aykroyd.  I guess we're also supposed to guffaw when he speaks the earlier film's signature catchphrase, "I ain't afraid of no ghost".  It would be one thing if the original cast were brought back to maybe put a fun spin on their original characters.  Here, it feels like the movie is saying, "Okay, we gave you the original cast, now leave us alone!"

The whole point of a reboot is obviously to put a fresh spin on a previously established franchise.  It allows a new generation of viewers to create their own fandom, just like when viewers back in the day such as myself discovered the original back in 1984.  When done right, a reboot can breathe new life and reinvigorate a series.  Ghostbusters simply wants to take our money, show us an idea that was done better 32 years ago, and send us on our way.  When you have the kind of talent this kind of movie has both on and behind the camera, that's the last thing you expect, but it's what we got.

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