Review of Ghostbusters (2016) by Tubey — 16 Jul 2016

I feel dirty for several reasons after watching this. First, because by paying to watch it, I've contributed to this becoming a "thing" which will see sequel after sequel. Second, because I felt my intelligence insulted by the sheer stupidity of the story and 'jokes', for want of a better word. And third - and most importantly - I now feel like I'll be made out to be a sexist for hating it, which is ridiculous.

Ghostbusters 2016 is an awful movie. It makes no attempt whatsoever to be coherent in its narrative, the jokes all misfire - I mean every single one of them, queef jokes included. The effects are straight out of Eddie Murphy's Haunted Mansion (for the uninitiated to that trainwreck of a movie, that means the effects are bad!) and it is a money-grubbing pander-fest from start to finish.

Most galling of all, the movie is out and out offensive. It's amazing to me that a movie that stood it's ground and called itself progressive, wanting to put women forward as strong role models in leading roles in movies... ends up giving the women here cookie cutter, dumb as a post characters that don't evolve or do anything meaningful throughout the entire thing. This is meant to be 'empowering' for women? Really? Is this what you girls want to hang up and go, "yeah, this is girl power!" Really?!?!

The men in the movie are portrayed as blithering idiots, and just exist to make sexist jokes out of. Not one character has any semblance of realism about them - not once did I think, "this is what a character would believably do in this situation." Not once.

It has none of the horror aspects of the originals in this movie series - in fact, apart from calling itself Ghostbusters, it has nothing whatsoever to do with the licence. This is a sketch show, dragged over an hour and a half, with amateur writing, direction and effects, which just completely misses the mark. It's just bad joke after bad joke - not once did it even raise a smirk; all it got out of me was a constant look of pure astonishment that a team largely made up of the one that brought us the excellent Bridesmaids can come up with pure diarrhea such as this.

Too many people pitched themselves to a political post with this one - too many people lambasted the bastardisation of a beloved franchise simply to make a feminist point, and conversely too many people lambasted men for being sexist pigs. The truth is both sides were wrong to do so; as this movie isn't worth the effort either way. This was a cynical cash grab, aiming to milk money out of feminists, who deserve much more effort and thought going into projects like this, so we can truly see progressive, strong movies and other media with well thought out and admirable female characters.

But I'm a sexist for thinking this, right? Give me a break... The short story on this - if you want to see a good movie, avoid this one like the plague.