I saw the new Ghostbusters last night…and it wasn’t bad.
It’s not going to make my list of top ten films of the year or anything, but it was good light entertainment. The story line was familiar, but it’s not as if you can do a lot with the core premise — even the original Ghostbusters sort of exhausted all the potential of the genre. It’s a genre that’s actually sui generis.
The real focus of this movie, and of the original, is the characters. Murray, Akroyd, Ramis, and Hudson were independently and as an ensemble entertaining, and the movie was just an excuse to bring a group of unique comic characters together in a strange situation. This version is exactly the same, and Wiig, McCarthy, McKinnon, and Jones pulled it off. The whole point of the movie is to bring four distinct, unique weirdos together and to have them riff off of each other.
What I also liked is that, while the story is familiar, and the whole point of the movie is the title characters, they did it without resorting to simply mimicking the original. You can’t line up Gilbert, Holtzmann, Tolan, and Yates against Stantz, Spengler, Venkman and Zeddmore and make any correspondences. As each of the original four were distinct from each other, the new four are also uniquely unique from each other and the originals.
And that was charming. Derivative as the story was, this one only added to the original by creating a new cast of distinctive individuals…who happened to all be women. Women with personalities? No wonder this movie has received all kinds of weird hatred from the alt right.
I felt pretty much the same way when I saw the movie. It is similar to the old movies in its themes because hoe couldn’t it be. It is funny in a similar way the old movies were.
People who pretend that the original movies were artful master pieces that this reboot devalued in some way are deluding themselves. It’s understandable though, it happened to me too. I first saw Ghostbusters when I was much younger and I guess, after some time you just remember the good parts. I recently wanted to watch the original movie with my girlfriend who had never seen it. I had been talking the movie up to her days. We were both in for a big disappointment when we finally watched it and it was just OK.
Of course, the new movie was not as American as the original one: http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/the-most-american-movie
[spoiler alert]
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they never said “Don’t cross the streams!” Sacrilege!!!
Kevin, the genderswapped receptionist character, was overcompensation. Substituting a male into Annie Potts’ character of Janine Melnitz. While Janine was pretty flaky, Kevin was hardly similar (especially the role he played later [no spoilers]) .
Still. it was a fun movie. In my opinion (who cares, I know) 2 thumbs up. all my objections are minor quibbles. Better than “not bad”. rather: “good, not great”.
it did throw in quite a lot of easter eggs, keep a sharp eye out.
welp, all for now.
So, I honestly loved this movie. L.O.V.E.D this movie. I went back and saw this movie again in a theater less than a week later; I have never in my entire life up to this point seen a movie twice in a theater just because I wanted to see it again.
And objectively? I suppose… sure, in a lot of ways it’s not a very original movie, and it plays on a lot of cliches, and bla bla bla… but I have never seen a movie in which I could actually identify with the protagonists in this way. Either they’re all dudes, or they’re mostly dudes and some ladies who struggle to reconcile their need to actually contribute to society with their need to be someone’s love interest, or their concerns seem totally meaningless to me (typical “girl movies”), or they’re so seriously bad-ass that I just can’t identify with them (Ripley springs to mind). I have never seen a movie with unabashedly nerdy women. It completely blew my mind, because I have never seen it before. I teared up at the moment at the climax (spoiler in Rot13) jura Reva whzcf vagb gur ibegrk nsgre Noovr, because I’ve been the weird girl whose friends left her behind to be respectable, and I’ve been the respectable girl who had to give up on her weird friends, and I really, really felt that moment. It should be a tired cliche… except there’s never been an adventure movie with an all-female cast like this.
I didn’t expect it to be this important to me. I have a lifetime’s experience of identifying with male protagonists, and I’m pretty good at it. But this completely blew my mind. I understand now why internet man-babies feel so threatened by a film like this. I can’t imagine feeling this way ALL THE TIME and then, suddenly, having SOME of the movies and SOME of the video games taken away from me.
All the jokes about trying to figure out how to be a woman in STEM academia? The moment when Erin’s department chair is trying to figure out what to say about her clothes? OMG, I laughed so hard at that moment. ALL the jokes about Erin’s clothes? “Can you tell me what it’s like to walk around all day in those shoes?” Wow. How often do you see jokes about sexism where the sexism is effectively the butt of the jokes? One of the most amazing things is that there was sexism present in the movie–the kind of all-pervasive grinding sexism that you get in the real world–and part of the protagonists’ victory was that they just GOT SHIT DONE anyway.
And don’t get me started on Jillian Holtzmann. Jillian Holtzmann is the person I wanted to grow up to be when I was 11 years old. I spent about 20 minutes the other day trying to figure out how to get my hair to do that. (Answer: would probably have to cut it.)
I see a lot of dudes complaining about Kevin. I thought Kevin was (1) completely hilarious–they went far enough with the joke to get past stupid and into seriously funny, and (2) actually as hot as the gag made him out to be. Count my mind also blown by a male character actually constructed to appeal to the female gaze–well, my female gaze, anyway, your mileage may very. If you think he went too far, at least he passes the Sexy Lamp test (if he were replaced by a sexy lamp, the plot would have changed; for example, the lamp would have been better on the phones).
Honestly, the original Ghostbusters… I didn’t like the original Ghostbusters that much. I liked the early seasons of the cartoon, and I kinda liked Ghostbusters II, but the original? It was full of constant notes from Venkmann’s boner. (At the start of the film he’s blowing his own experiment in order to hit on a test subject. He spends most of the rest of the film condescending to Dana in an attempt to get into her pants, when he KNOWS FULL WELL that supernatural phenomena are real. What, the stuff SHE saw can’t possibly be real because she’s a hot chick?) And when he isn’t trying to rub his dick on anything in a skirt, he’s shitting all over Ray. Seriously, Venkmann is a TERRIBLE friend to Ray. Why does Ray put up with that crap? Because nerds put up with that crap from their Cool Friend. That is a narrative that has to die.
So… Ghostbusters 2016. I think there are a lot of dudes that don’t get it. But I’d like to see this done more. An ORIGINAL action-comedy movie with an all-female cast would be even better. But I’ll settle for remakes; as long as I can watch more action films where I identify with the heroes, and more comedy films that can be funny without personally insulting me. And please Leslie Jones and Kate McKinnon. In all the things. Seriously. (And people who don’t feel like Patty Tolan was a seriously awesome character didn’t see the same movie I did. Read this: http://goo.gl/J8GJbr)
So with you, sydneylytefoot. I was almost crying at several points, just because this highlights all the “missing” movies – the ones that never existed, but would have had women protagonists. We miss out on so much by not seeing women (and members of other diverse groups) not take their rightful place in our generation’s storytelling.
Sydneylytefoot @ 4:
Word, word, word. I hated the original flick, and that was down to the sexism dripping from every bit of it, and Bill Murray’s character, who I found to be contemptible. The fact that so many men identified with Murray’s character was disturbing. He was a thoroughly unlikeable, self-obsessed asshole who thought he was god’s gift.
Haven’t seen the new movie, but I’m looking forward to it.
it’s not just the alt right that has a hate on for the movie. It’s pretty much every man born in the 80’s has a bizarre hat eon for the film. the IMDB score is about 1.5 point below where it would be because thousands of men decided to give the film a 1 without seeing it.
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/ghostbusters-is-a-perfect-example-of-how-internet-ratings-are-broken/
http://screencrush.com/ghostbusters-imdb-what-the/
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/ghostbusters-reboot-imdb-statistics-breakdown-proves-haters-opinions-are-unjustified-1570264
Ooo, we’re discussing Ghostbusters IMDb ratings? I did a deep dive on them, and came to some slightly different conclusions:
Well I’m PO’d. To hell with “don’t cross the streams” … I wanted the “Yes, it’s true. This man has no dick.” line. Set up right (maybe the guy having doing the innuendo and furtive ogling crap) and spoken by a woman it could have been killer.
I’m in the “good, not great” camp.
Mostly I couldn’t stop laughing because save about 50 or so IQ points, Kevin was a dead ringer in the way he spoke, moves, personality etc for a South African guy I work with. (Office nick name now “Thor”).
— TWZ
colonelzen:
You seem to be completely unaware of the fact that sexist crap being spoken by a woman does not automatically make it cool, non-sexist crap.
@HJ
The protest votes are what interest, for lack of a better term, me. The IMDB rating was tanked, because a group a men were cry babies about women being in a remake of a film from their childhood. If you check out the written reviews (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1289401/reviews?ref_=tt_ov_rt), it is completely clear that a non insignificant number of men down graded the film when 1) they hadn’t even seen it and 2) did so for misogynistic/anti-feminist reasons. I don’t care if once you factor those votes out the gender gap shrinks. The problem is the protest votes. Ghostbusters isn’t the only entertainment property to be swamped like this (http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/men-are-sabotaging-the-online-reviews-of-tv-shows-aimed-at-women/).
I agree that the plot was not groundbreaking, but I really liked this movie. Like a lot of other people, I loved seeing four women who were decent individual characters represented on screen. They weren’t the usual stereotypes that get put on screen for ensemble groups of women (eg pretty queen bee, airhead, “down to earth, likes boy-stuff” protagonist etc etc). They felt human and as if the writers and director respected them.
The humour also didn’t really rely on put downs and interpersonal nastiness the way many comedies do, including the original Ghostbusters. The women at the core of the movie seemed to like and respect each other.
Though Patty looked like a stereotype in the ads, she is a better character in the movie. She certainly has a much bigger and more respected role than Winston in the original. Apparently the role was originally written for Melissa McCarthy, though it may have been changed for the magnificent Leslie Jones. Though there is still probably problematic stuff that I am not fully comprehending (due to my white privilege), she is as rounded and funny as the other characters.
As to the Kevin character, I don’t see him as any worse as a stupid secretary stereotype than many similar female characters, eg Bubbles from Ab Fab. Also apparently many of his best bits came from improv from Chris Hemsworth, eg (mild spoilers) Mike Hat and the glasses.
I’m not a Ghostbusters fan (I find the original movie boring and overrated to be honest) and I thought the new film was ok. Though I do feel bad though for GB fans who wanted to see an actual third installment rather than a reboot that ignored the original two movies. I liked the interactions between the four main characters, but the villain was poorly written and developed and the end battle was just re-hashing the ending of the original movie. I thought it would have made more sense if he were a rival paranormal scientist or a former collaborator with the main characters rather than just a random janitor that happened across Abby and Erin’s paranormal book.
Anyway, what did people think of -SPOILERS- Bill Murray’s cameo as a ghost skeptic that gets killed? I thought that was the most cringe-worthy part of the movie. It felt to me like it was straight out of God’s Not Dead.
On the contrary, I think it was supposed to be a note on selective hyperskepticism, more than a note on faith. Murray’s character asks to see the evidence, which is entirely reasonable outside of context, whereas the God’s Not Dead folks reject the very concept of empirical evidence from the get-go.
That said, the same note on selective hyperskepticism was already addressed with Erin–where at the start of the film she characterizes her own findings as a budding scientist as nonsense, only to spin on a dime when she could corroborate her & Abby’s observations–as any proper empiricist should. I don’t think Murray’s character was particularly necessary to make the point that people honestly valuing empirical evidence can and will change their mind when evidence of something is found.
re 14:
good point. I agree about your point, but disagree how GB2016 presented that point, in how they presented Murray’s exit.[metaphor]. Murray’s dialog was sufficient at showing how ridiculous his attitude was. to [spoiler] was unnecessary spite.
Mike Smith @11:
I don’t mind protest voting, per se; it’s one form of expression, used not only to hate on a film but also love it. I see it as one indicator of a cult classic. Where I run into problems with protest voting, though, is when we can’t separate those votes out from people trying to give a dispassionate rating; unlike IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes, MetaCritic’s user reviews are on a three-point scale. The latter probably doesn’t have the resolution I need to do my analysis (though I haven’t tried, admittedly).
[CN: MASSIVE SPOILERS]
GuineaPigDan @13:
Yeah, he definitely took a back seat. I found him plausible, but then again I’m a frequent reader of We Hunted The Mammoth.
I saw the 1984 Ghostbusters within a day of the 2016 one, and I couldn’t see much resemblance. Here, I’ll summarize the endings of both:
===
If you squint your eyes, you can turn both into “a giant monster rages over New York while ghosts terrorize everyone,” but you’ve gotta try reaaaaaly hard.
Heiss may not be dead. If you buy “Ghosts of Our Past: Both Literally and Figuratively,” you’ll see a forward written by “him” where he laments the nasty medical bills that resulted from his skepticism. I say “may,” because the book might not be canonical: it disagrees with the novelization on how Erin was haunted as a kid, for instance.
As for what happened onscreen, it didn’t bother me much; it primarily existed to generate some tension between Erin, who was desperate to validate her claims about the existence of ghosts, and Abby, who was more concerned about the dangers of unleashing a ghost, as a reminder that the two haven’t quite patched up their friendship by that point. The skepticism angle was secondary.
I liked it.
The extras on the DVD are going to be a blast.
Add me to the list of people that loved it! I wasn’t expecting to – the trailers, frankly, weren’t that funny – but it massively exceeded my expectations.
One of the things I loved about it was that the principle cast were friends. There was basically none of the Tony Vs Steve or Bruce Vs Clark drama here, or even Peter Vs Egon, and the movie was so much better for it. Four unique characters, all supportive of each other, and all working toward a common goal – it was so refreshing for a movie to acknowledge that this is actually fun to watch, rather than the usual “you must always have conflict, even amongst the good guys” nonsense that we see so much of.
Saw the movie last week in 3D, which was nothing to write home about since it was converted to 3D rather than shot in it natively. But as mu h as I enjoyed the actresses’ performances—and they were excellent—they deserved a MUCH better script than they got.