I can not recite all the lines, nor would I dress up in a jumpsuit to see the film – like so many did – but I do know a fun movie when I see it, and this is just that. There is also the 1989 sequel, as well as board games, comic books, and video games, all of it based on the success of the franchise.
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These days, we have Black Widow and Scarlet Witch in The Avengers movies, but yet again, they trade on their beauty as much as their badassery. I just thought, I want to be driving the moped, I don’t want to be on the back of it.
Before delving further, a disclaimer seems necessary: Ghostbusters is not 100-percent feminist, nor is it a revolutionary film. And that is the wrong way to approach it. Will the new version, released July 15, fare as well 32 years later? The full review of 2016’s Ghostbusters is here below.
Kristen Wiig re-teams with her BRIDESMAIDS director Paul Feig and co-star Melissa McCarthy, for a hilarious romp that is like a superhero movie without the ponderous stuff. Reading online comments, Erin comes across one that reads, “Ain’t no bitches going to hunt no ghosts”. And they aren’t the only ones who believe. The brown and orange jumpsuits are statement enough: These women are here to catch ghosts and make jokes.
I’m not sold on Chris Hemsworth as the hunky and hammy office receptionist, taking over from where considerably funnier Annie Potts left off.
China’s official censorship guidelines technically prohibit movies that “promote cults or superstition” – a holdover from the Communist Party’s secular ideology – and the country’s regulators occasionally have been known to use this obscure provision as rationale for banning films that feature ghosts or supernatural beings in a semi-realistic way (Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest suffered such a fate in 2006, thanks to its depictions of ghouls and cannibalism). In a summer movie season where many movies seem to go on and on, this one feels over much too fast. And if you are still content with it, if you still adamantly believe that you are not going to see it because you think its not amusing or that the four female leads are not amusing, then this review can not change your mind. The Chinese character for “ghost” was even removed from the title in hopes of the film passing the archaic censorship laws.
There are callbacks to the original “Ghostbusters”, and small cameos by most of the original cast, but Feig is careful not to rely too much on such fan service. Something otherworldly does in fact show up once the tour group’s left the premises, literally scaring the crap out of the tour guide and prompting a call to Columbia University professor Erin Gilbert (Kristen Wiig).
Whether it’s teen sitcoms with “Freaks and Geeks”, the buddy-cop relationship of “The Heat” or spy tropes in “Spy”, Feig has proven his strong suit is in dismantling cliches and rebuilding from the ground up. Feig and Dippold smartly incorporated pointed digs at the haters, not necessarily embracing the backlash but at least acknowledging it in obvious references at the beginning of the film. “She really really would complain about how heavy they were each day and when she gets mad, she gets amusing”. The other three are also sartorial outliers, especially McKinnon’s Holtzmann, who frequently rocks green bifocals to go with her unruly blond hair. Still, it’s amusing, and somehow it works.
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In related news, screenwriter Max Landis hit up Twitter yesterday to not only offer his two cents on the film, but also digress on how close he came to writing the third entry. And it’s just like, ‘Oh my god!’ I’m a total geek when I watch my own movies!
