It's a funny reboot that can stand on its own without the help of its iconic predecessor.
Ghostbusters
Grade: B
Director: Paul Feig (Bridesmaids)
Screenplay: Feig, Katie Dippold (The Heat)
Cast: Melissa McCarthy (Spy) Kristin Wiig (The Martian)
Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 1 hr 56 min
by John DeSando
“Is it the boobs you don't like? Because I can make them . . . bigger.” Kevin (Chris Hemsworth)
As the new blonde bombshell secretary, Kevin embodies the modern take on the 1984 Ghostbusters legend: It’s now the boobs dealing with the boos. Four talented comediennes have nicely helped reboot the franchise through wit and grit, not gender. Kevin just turns the clichéd dumb secretary on its head and makes it a clueless man.
So much of the pre-release negativity about this film came from people who largely hadn’t seen it, alleging political correctness to down-right misogyny. As it turns out, I try to remember a single sexist joke, except over Kevin, that pointedly defames males to the glory of females. Ghostbusters is really about four funny people saving the big city from big ghosts.
The cameos of Bill Murray, Dan Ackroyd, and Sigourney Weaver, not terribly funny in the current roles, remind me that so many factors are the ingredients of success you just can’t plant actors and expect them to be winning blooms without sterling writing and perfect timing. However, as avatars of modern screen comedy, they are a pleasant plant of talent, along with director Paul Feig’s Bridesmaids as a precursor and Harold Ramis’s spirit from the likes of Groundhog Day.
Of all the talent in this iteration, even considering Melissa McCarthy’s considerable presence, Kate McKinnon is the stand out as wacky Jillian, the manic, mugging playful echo of Harold Ramis’s mad lab hound. She provides the ghost-smashing machinery and sometimes garbled commentary that give a zany underpinning to the still outrageous conceits.
While the ghost-busting finale is by far too long, Ghostbusters on the whole is a successful comic take not only on its iconic original but also female buddy films like Bridesmaids and, lest we forget, Thelma and Louise. Abby and Erin (McCarthy and Kristen Wiig) provide an emotional theme of reconciling buddies that at times raises the film above slapstick.
This film is just a solid comedy that happens to have four female leads interested in bashing ghosts, not men:
“Okay, I don't know if it was a race thing or a lady thing, but I'm mad as hell.” Patty (Leslie Jones)
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts WCBE’s It’s Movie Time and co-hosts Cinema Classics. Contact him at JDeSando@Columbus.rr.com
