Review of Ghostbusters (2016) by Sirthinkalot — 14 Jul 2016

I have been skeptical of this film pretty much from the moment it was announced. And that the trailers/marketing, that god-awful cover of the theme song, and especially the way the cast and crew painted everybody who dared to say they were skeptical as sexist trolls, didnt do much to dissuade that. So needless to say, going in my expectations were about as low as as possible for a film.

The good news is, its not AS terrible as I feared. The bad news is, its still pretty terrible.

The biggest problem with Ghostbusters, is that pretty much everything about the movie feels forced. The jokes, the relationships between the four Ghostbusters, the winks and nods to the original, the characterization of the bad guy, the technobabble the big battle sequence at the end. None of it felt genuine. Pretty much everything in the film felt like ‘this is a movie, and this is whats supposed to happen in this movie.’.

There’s far too much reliance on zany/wacky humor. Theres very few quotable lines. Certainly none that are as memorable as ‘tell him about the Twinkie.’ Or ‘Dogs and cats living together.’ I guess if like that style of humor(think Bridesmaids, but less crude), you might like the jokes in this film. But its not my thing.

The winks and nods to the original just dont work. They’re not subtle enough to be overlooked(like in say, Total Recall), and pull you out from the movie, forcing you to think about the far superior original. I’m not just talking about the cameos(which this film would be much better without), but also the way that certain scenes are almost shot-for-shot identical to scenes in the original.

Its a bit of departure from a strict review, but I want to talk about the technobabble in this film. Part of what made the original film so great was that Dan Aykroyd is a true-blue believer in the paranormal, and based the story and script on actual pseudo-scientific theories. The result being that for a film about ghosts, it has a real feel of authenticity. When terms that have their origin in pseudo-scientific circles are used in the film, feel like they are legitimate and being used in the proper way.

In the remake though, it feels more like Paul Feig put a bunch of ‘science-y’ sounding words in a hat and drew them out randomly. You know how in Star Trek, the plots are always solved by a series of giberish that sounds almost, though not quite like actual science? Yea thats pretty much what Ghostbusters sounds like too. It was annoying in Star Trek, but we put up with it for the otherwise interesting plots and characters, and this film is lacking in those departments.

So there were good things about this film right? Well yes. Chris Hemsworth was pretty funny as the dopey secretary. Pretty much all of the laughs of the film came from him, and he clearly had a LOT of fun playing the bad guy when his character got possessed. In fact pretty much the entire cast really did seem to be enjoying shooting this film, although in Kate McKinnon ’s her hi-jinks came across more annoying than endearing. But still its just a shame that this film wasnt better so you could enjoy it with them.

TLDR: Dont see this film. I tried to warn you.