Ghostbusters (2016)

A physicist (Kristen Wiig), a ghost hunter (Melissa McCarthy), an engineer (Kate McKinnon), and a mass-transit ticket-taker (Leslie Jones) join forces to form the Ghostbusters. A disgruntled janitor is summoning ghosts in order to carry out a larger scheme that will wipe out humanity and our team must use their high tech gadgets to defeat the ghosts before it is too late.

I can’t review Ghostbusters 2016 without mentioning its troll war. The uproar, mainly on social media instead of anywhere nearing legitimacy, was louder than any discussion of the quality of the film will every be. If, somehow, you missed it, it is this: an unassociated mob of people made up primarily of misogynists and those who have based their self-identity on some bit of pop culture from their childhoods proclaimed the film was terrible before they saw it. The big problem for them was that the main roles were now going to be cast with women and that didn’t go over well with men who are very sensitive about their manhood. The more legitimate complaint that this was yet another remake in a time when a larger percentage than ever before of major releases are unoriginal was lost in the sea of fear and anger about women existing. To counter this, an anti-mob, mob of less troubled people (who also hadn’t seen the picture) declared the film would be great due to the main roles going to women. Not that this is a two-sided battle of progressives vs. regressives. While some progressives have claimed (a tad too strongly) that the movie is a step forward in gender equality, the movie hardly has much to be proud of racially.

The entire argument—one without facts—is what the Internet seems mainly to be for, and it became heated.

Well, a little heated, on its own. You see Sony tested the feature and found they had a bomb on their hands. It wasn’t funny and was not getting reactions that would sell tickets. So, they grabbed onto the Internet argument and made it so much worse. They quietly pushed the idea that actually the movie had tested well and that anyone who didn’t like it was part of an anti-woman hate group. They fostered this fight, and the defenders of the film walked into it like little lambs, yelling louder, thus making the detractors yell louder, and Sony sold some tickets.

As for me, I’m in the camp of loving more women in prime roles. I’d also like to see a lot more original scripts produced. Oh well, it isn’t as if the next James Bond film is going to be original. And even with Sony acting like scum, it would be useful socially for Ghostbuster ’16 to be good, not to mention it’s nice to have more good movies.

And now I’ve seen it.

Sigh.

It isn’t good.

It is an embarrassment. I could replace the rest of my review with a list of film terms and the words “is embarrassing.” This is clearest with the humor. Nothing is funny in the two hour running time. They should have been able to do something with Chris Hemsworth’s gender-swapped dumb blonde, which is filled with potential. But no. His big gag is not answering the phone.

The humor can be summed up simply: in the first few minutes, we are given a fart joke, a queef joke, and a joke about someone loosing bowel control. In all cases, there’s nothing more to the joke. Rather, it’s just pointing and saying “There’s a fart.” That’s it. That’s the joke. If you are five, this might be hysterical, though perhaps only for underachieving five-year-olds. Remember I mentioned this film is embarrassing.

The acting (or the characters—take your pick as there is no way the roles as written could have been preformed well) is terrible. Kristen Wiig comes out the best as she’s just boring. With McCarthy, McKinnon, and Jones, we’re back into the land of embarrassment. McKinnon is the worst, over-acting as if she’s desperately trying to enliven a dying SNL skit. Yet, she’s less annoying than the other two. Jones is also acting for the twentieth row but is stuck with a character that couldn’t have been funny in concept. McCarthy’s Abby isn’t a character at all. The actress just waves her arms around and says “Yes!”

The plot isn’t much, but on its own it is only a source of embarrassment for being so bland. There’s a villain, but forget about him. The writers certainly did. I’d normally say the story was sufficient to be the basis for an hour long film, but there’s a lot of pointless CGI stuck in, so the movie couldn’t deal with any more plot. And that’s the bigger problem: empty FX trumping plot and character. The film’s last quarter is an unending climax of heroes vs. ghosts, with absolutely no stakes. Ghosts get bigger or smaller for no reason and the team members pull out new weapons (that in one case McKinnon’s engineer actually says she forgot she had) that shoot slightly different version of beams and rays that can cope with whatever ghost pops up. There’s a lot of smoke and things move around but it means nothing. I was not engaged. It was just background colors moving about.

To keep me disengaged, there’s a bizarrely large amount of fan service. Four of the original cast members appear (as well as a bust of the deceased Harold Ramis) not as new, relevant characters, or even as their old characters, but just appear for the sake of appearing and spewing an old catchphrase. We also get “Slimer” and the Stay Puff Marshmallow Man, again, not because they fit into the picture, but just to reference the old film and say “Hey, we remember that movie from your childhood; aren’t we clever.” Well, I was past childhood in ’84 and no, they aren’t clever.

I wish there was something likeable in Ghostbusters, but it is an immature mess. In a year of bad films, it doesn’t reach the bottom, but it is one to miss.