Ghostbusters

So there was a couple periods throughout the summer that I just missed the big movies coming out. I got around to the ones that were important like Suicide Squad or Captain America Civil War because, you know me, that’s kind of how this blog started, I’m not going to miss one of those big films. But there were several movies that came out that I wanted to see, but they either didn’t have enough draw to bring me out to the theaters or they came at a time when I was too busy to go out to the movies. Ghostbusters falls somewhere in between.

I heard about the Ghostbusters reboot about a year back and honestly at the time, I thought it was a little bit of a ploy. Whenever a reboot is announced and they say that it’s going to be starring an all-female cast, I just have to ask… why? That might sound misogynist or close minded but it’s more a purpose of narrative. How is the story going to be enhanced if you make this movie a totally female cast? Are you doing it because there’s a really great story there? Or are you doing it because it’s 2016 and we need to make a statement about how there’s a misrepresentation of women in the media? I don’t think that either are bad, I do understand the reasoning for the latter, but with any movie, not just Ghostbusters, I would rather a movie is driven by story and not by a social commentary ploy.

However, once I got past questioning the decision, I actually was pretty excited, especially when I heard the cast of Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon, and Leslie Jones. That is a solid cast of really funny female comedians. I’ll talk more about those four later in the review, but I wanna talk about the context leading up to the movie.

Then the trailer hit. And I’ll be honest, I didn’t actually hate the trailer. In fact, looking back, I actually really liked it. I posted it before all the backlash and it turned out to be the most hated trailer of all time. But hey I kind of liked it. Sue me. I know I said that I got really excited for the movie after the trailer, but all the controversy that happened because of this movie really didn’t make it any more or less appealing. At a certain point I realized that this movie was sparking all this controversy and at the end of the day, it would probably just be mediocre… and it was.

Ghostbusters follows the story of a group of women who all have interest in the paranormal. You start with Dr. Erin Gilbert (played by Kirsten Wiig) and Dr. Abbie Yates (played by Melissa McCarthy). They are both professors who a while ago did a lot of work studying the paranormal but Erin realized that she wasn’t being taken seriously and she wants to go off and be a respected physicist at Colombia. She however is brought back into the fold of the paranormal very quickly when she, Abbie, and her new partner Dr. Jillian Holtzman (played by Kate McKinnon) find evidence of a ghost at a haunted mansion.

Now before I go on, I do have to mention that the scenes in that haunted mansion in the first five minutes of the movie are actually really funny and clever dialogue. Zach Woods plays a tour guide and he actually gives some really funny lines that I picked up on at the beginning and they were hilarious. I kind of wish the witty dialogue from the first five minutes had pulled over into the rest of the film but it is what it is.

So they find a ghost at the mansion and post the video of it online. To be fair they do look insane while doing it and they all lose their jobs. However, they make it their goal to seek out the unknown and hunt ghosts for their living. They pick up Patty Tolan (played by Leslie Jones) a New York subway worker and they form the Ghostbusters.

And then they hire Kevin… oh sweet lord… Kevin…

Maybe I need to go back and really delve into Chris Hemsworth’s performance here because I really hated Kevin. And it sucks because Kevin is a really funny idea. You’ve got Chris Hemsworth looking all Thor like, he’s built like an Ox, you think he’s going to be a love interest, and he’s just a dumbass. It’s a really funny idea. But Kevin is not just dumb, he’s beyond dumb. He’s got a point of diminishing returns that he hits very quickly when he hears a loud noise and covers his eyes…

There have been brilliantly played dumb people. Amanda Seifried’s character in Mean Girls, that is a great example of the stupidly dumb character. Kevin goes all the way. In the words of Robert Downey Jr. from Tropic Thunder…

But anyways, they have this adventure where they hunt ghosts and uncover a plot to release ghosts from their ghostly plane onto the world. It’s basically the plot from the first Ghostbusters but that at least had an interesting villain. I’m pretty sure Ghostbusters has suffered the DC movie treatment because I get the feeling there was a more complete version of this story based on the editing and certain unexplained storylines, one of them being the bad guy. He’s just an asshole who wants to let ghosts out onto our world… there’s really not any explanation to him and he’s gone before you really know it. For a while when the movie first started I thought that he was going to be a lackey for a larger more terrifying villain, but no, he’s just a pipsqueak who’s got a thing for ghosts. At least that’s how I understood it. If someone can explain the motivations for this bad guy please do because I could not figure it out whatsoever.

Along the way the movie pulls out a lot of cameos and this kind of ties into the discussion I had about the cameos in Popstar versus the raw comedic talent in Step Brothers. It all depends on what your goal is in a film, but I’m more privy to just having talent be in a movie because they’re talented, not because they’re a recognizable face. I say this because it applies to Ghostbusters. I hated all the cameos in this film. Bill Murray was in this film as a ghost denier. This could have been a really funny role for him to play and instead it just made me remember that I hate Bill Murray. On top of that, I don’t know if it’s a spoiler when you say a cameo dies but Bill Murray dies in this movie. He could have been killed of hilariously like he was in Zombieland or how Johnny Depp was killed in 21 Jumpstreet. But instead he’s just thrown out a window and it’s never actually confirmed that he’s dead. Give the man a funny line about how he regrets Garfield or something like that. And I actively yelled Booo! at my TV when I saw Dan Akroyd. The other cameos were kind of lazy and I didn’t totally understand them. I didn’t hate all of them like the Ernie Hudson cameo, but even that I felt was just a little bit lazy.

The real comedy comes from the interaction between the four main characters. Honest Trailers recently took their take on this movie and they said it pretty well that they were all trying to be the comic relief in a movie that needed a straight man. Kristin Wiig is the awkward comic relief, Melissa McCarthy is the physical comic relief, Kate McKinnon is the weird comic relief, and Leslie Jones is the down to earth comic relief. While they try and create some kind dramatic tension between these four, there really isn’t anything tying them together. There’s not really any chemistry between the

four of them and because the movie is edited so weirdly, there’s not really any opportunity for any kind of drama or tension to form between them.

Like there’s a part in the movie where something bad happens and it’s obvious to someone who can guess what happens in movies to guess that Kristen Wiig stopped being a Ghostbuster. And when they meet up for the final battle, they’re like, “Welcome back!” as if she had gone somewhere. But they never really suggest that they had a falling out because that part was cut. Having a falling out like that could actually provide some context of the relationship these four have, but instead its left out and a little confusing. I’m sure there’s an extended cut that explains all of that lack of chemistry, but Ghostbusters is not like Batman v Superman or Suicide Squad. I’m not going to go out and check out the extended cut. I don’t even like that those movies had unanswered questions that were answered in bonus features but I am really invested in those stories so I check them out. Ghostbusters is not at that level at all.

Now as far as being funny, I will say that while they are ALL trying to be the comic relief, I did enjoy the humor out of most of them. I’m not taking back any thoughts I had on how this is a really good cast for this movie. Like I said in my review of the trailer, it’s a good sign when the weak link in a group is Melissa McCarthy. They’re all really funny women and I did enjoy what they did correctly.

I think the big standout of this movie was Kate McKinnon. I have absolutely adored McKinnon on Saturday Night Live and she was probably the one I was the most excited about and the one I was the most pleased by in this movie. Yeah, she’s just the weirdo doing weird things but she actually made me laugh quite a few times. She might be worth the price of admission alone.

And on top of it all, she is given probably the biggest moment of badassery in the final fight scene of the movie.

And that brings up a really good point about the action in this film. Its actually really well done. I never really considered the first Ghostbuster movie anything of an action movie. All they did was point their cannons at the ghost and the most exciting thing they did with that was cross the streams. In the new one they have a lot of cool gadgets and cool weapons they use on the ghosts. The weapons they use are the kinds of weapons you would see in a video game where you get an upgrade in your weapon by reaching a new level. You still have the standard weapon but as you level up, you’re able to get a better weapon that does something really cool, like suck ghosts and shoot them out like they went through a wood chipper. Someone had to have had fun designing these gadgets and they’re really cool.

So overall, what did I think of Ghostbusters.

Well the truth is, this movie really isn’t something to get all worked up about. It’s actually kind of amazing how up in arms people got about this movie for one reason or another. Whether it was Ghostbuster purists protesting because they remade a “classic”, or men being close minded and thinking that women can’t be the lead of a “classic” movie like Ghostbusters. They actually have a really clever line in the beginning where they’re looking at YouTube comments and Melissa McCarthy basically reads a comment written by someone about the new movie. That was a really clever joke in my book.

I was never a huge fan of the original to begin with, but if you were, you shouldn’t be mad that they remade this movie. It’s not like this version negates from that one at all, and if this isn’t your cup of tea, you can always go back to the first one, it isn’t going anywhere.  We live in a world where there are going to be reboots. I’ve come to the conclusion that nothing is sacred and anything could be rebooted if the right studio executive has a good enough pitch to sell it. And if you don’t have interest in seeing reboots, nobody is forcing you to watch them. There will be reboots as long as we give Hollywood the message of our money by going to see these movies.

I’m still not totally convinced that this story absolutely needed to be told with an only female cast and that it’s not supporting a trend of movies only being made so they can get a full female cast involved. However, you do have to appreciate the empowerment that can come out of casts like this. We finally get a movie where the kickass woman doesn’t need to be a sexy goddess in a figure revealing skin tight leather suit, it can just be Kate McKinnon kicking ass. And these four can be role models in a way we haven’t seen before.

Ghostbusters needed a lot of work done on it before it was ready and even if it had been, I don’t know if it would have been my cup of tea. I think it is an average leaning on the not so great side of movies.

However, before I finish there was one thing that was just unforgiveable in this entire movie… and that was the Fall Out Boy cover over the original Ghostbusters Theme song… that song made me want to punch someone in the face.

But those are my thoughts on Ghostbusters. What did you think? Do you wanna see more of this team busting Ghosts? Is Ghostbusters dead? Is there going to be a larger Ghostbusters franchise? What do you think? Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @cmhaugen24 as well as send me your requests for movies I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog.

I’ll leave you with this. Even though I'm not a huge fan of the original or this movie, I do have to say that half the appeal of Ghostbusters is probably in the song. And as long as Fallout Boy isn't singing it, I'm good. Enjoy!