I don't normally worry when Hollywood cranks out a new remake of an old classic. I've seen enough good ones over the years that the idea doesn't bug me that much. But then I heard that Sony would be remaking Ghostbusters and my heart sank. The original movie is one of my favorite movies of all time, and I'd gotten my hopes up that one day we'd see them return in Ghostbusters III for one last ride into the sunset. Even after Harold Ramis died in 2014, I still clutched onto that belief.
But a remake? Really?! Why not just follow what Star Wars: The Force Awakens did and give us a sequel that revives the series and has the old cast hand the torch over to a new one? The idea of remaking Ghostbusters hasn't endeared itself to me at all, and it hasn't helped that I've found the bits and pieces I've seen so far to be painfully unfunny. But I felt that I owed it to myself to see it anyway, to give it a chance and see if my preconceived notions were incorrect. And you know what? I didn't hate it. It's far, far from perfect... but I didn't hate it.
Years ago, Erin Gilbert (Kristen Wiig) and Abby Yates (Melissa McCarthy) wrote a book that posited that ghosts just might actually exist. The book was a big fat flop, and an embarrassed Erin distanced herself from both it and Abby. Their lives take far different paths as time passes. Abby runs a parapsychology lab at a low-rent technical college, assisted by her rather kooky associate Jillian Holtzmann (Kate McKinnon), while Erin is a respected physics professor at Columbia University and is desperate to put her past behind her. But she quickly learns that the past can have a bad habit of encroaching on the present.
Erin is approached by someone asking her to look into a potential haunting at a local museum, producing a copy of she and Abby's book when she denies knowing anything about the paranormal. She is horrified to discover that Abby has had the book republished, something that threatens both her reputation and career. Erin approaches Abby and demands she stop selling it, but when she mentions the museum haunting, Abby and Holtzmann insist on looking into it and drag a reluctant Abby along for the ride.
They do encounter an actual ghost at the mansion, but embarrassing footage of their investigation goes viral after Abby posts it on YouTube and all three are fired from their jobs. Erin, Abby, and Holtzmann take this as an opportunity to become professional paranormal investigators. Their business mostly draws out kooks and pranksters at first, and their dimwitted receptionist Kevin (Chris Hemsworth) isn't much help either. But they're soon contacted by Patty Tolan (Leslie Jones), a subway booth attendant who swears she saw a ghost in one of the terminals and wants them to investigate.
Their journey into the subway doesn't quite go exactly as planned, but it gives them the confidence to graduate from paranormal investigators to paranormal exterminators. Bringing Patty aboard as the fourth member of their team and armed with equipment built by Holtzmann, their public profile begins to rise and they adopt the name the media had given them, "the Ghostbusters." A sudden spike in supernatural activity leads the team to a strange little man named Rowan North (Neil Casey). An occult-obsessed weirdo, Rowan has sworn to completely demolish the barrier between the living world and the afterlife and allow untold scores of ghosts into our plane of existence. He's dangerously close to accomplishing that goal, and it's up to the Ghostbusters to stop him.
As I entered the theater to see this new iteration of the Ghostbusters franchise, a feeling of dread followed me. The advertising campaign hadn't done much to sell me on this new movie, the online arguments are frustratingly annoying, and I honestly haven't enjoyed what little I've seen of Kristen Wiig and Melissa McCarthy in the past. But I thought to myself, "what if I had completely misjudged it?" And it turns out that I had, to a degree. The Ghostbusters remake isn't a particularly great movie, but it's got quite a few moments that are a lot of fun. Even at its absolute worst, I found it to still be an entertaining diversion that isn't a totally bad way to kill two hours of your time.
In the director's chair is Paul Feig, whose prior work I honestly haven't seen. Yeah, I know Bridesmaids was a huge smash hit and won all kinds of awards, and The Heat and Spy were no slouches at the box office either. But I won't lie, none of those movies actually appealed to me. They just didn't look like anything that would be up my alley, y'know? However, I wouldn't dare miss a new Ghostbusters movie, so I was went into the movie willing to give Feig a chance. Strictly speaking about his direction, Feig's work is serviceable, I guess. It gets the job done, but it isn't anything special. He puts the movie's 3D effects to good use, throwing slime and lasers beyond the edges of the frame. But past that, there isn't really a whole lot to talk about. The cinematography feels flat even in 3D and the pacing is inconsistent, bouncing back and forth between "energetic" and "dull" like a ping pong ball at high speed. The movie doesn't feel big, but more like it's just kinda there.
I really can't say much about the script either. Penned by Feig and Katie Dippold, the script is probably the movie's weakest part. The original movie was a group of comedians stuck inside a horror movie, while this is a straightforward comedy from start to finish. Some of the jokes are funny, don't get me wrong. But there are so many that fall flat, or are good for a light chuckle but aren't the hilarious zingers Feig and Dippold may have been hoping for. (Did we need that stupid running gag with Abby and her wonton soup orders?)
I'm also curious why Feig and Dippold felt the need to tell us every tiny little detail about how the Ghostbusters got started. We didn't need to see how they built their proton packs, or where their logo and jumpsuits came from. And could the movie's villain have been any more lame? He's so utterly forgettable that I had to Google his name since I couldn't remember it otherwise. Gozer was a god of destruction, Vigo the Carpathian was the ghost of a medieval tyrant... this guy is just some dweeb who wants to let ghosts take over New York City because he was picked on growing up. Was that really the best Feig and Dippold could come up with?
I said earlier that I enjoyed the movie, even though I haven't had a lot of nice things to say about it thus far. And that's because the thing that really drew me in was the cast. Well, the four main actresses did, anyway. The majority of the cast are forgettable, while Neil Casey is honestly not very good as our villain and Chris Hemsworth is irritating as the Ghostbusters' dimwitted secretary. Hemsworth gets a couple of chuckles here and there, but his character is written to be so painfully stupid that he starts quickly becomes annoying.
But I quite liked the four lead actresses. They're likable and engaging, with a believable chemistry between them. Melissa McCarthy and Kristen Wiig have their moments, as does Leslie Jones, but the show is undoubtedly stolen by Kate McKinnon. I haven't watched much Saturday Night Live over the last fifteen years or so, so I can't say I'm familiar with McKinnon (or Jones, for that matter). But she's absolutely the best part of the movie. McKinnon brings a madcap, energetic charm to the movie, so much so that it makes her scenes more fun than they might've been without her. McKinnon is utterly fantastic and practically carries the whole movie on her back.
Long story short, this new Ghostbusters movie isn't very good. Maybe I might've been carrying a slight bias against it since I'd wanted the old cast back in their old roles. I don't know. But that said, the new movie can certainly be enjoyable at times. And even at its worst, it's still a fun footnote in the Ghostbusters franchise. So who ya gonna call? These new four might not be your first choice, but they'll do in a pinch.
Final Rating: **½
