Film Review: Unoriginal “Ghostbusters” Barely Manages to Scare up Excitement, Laughs

By Editor July 15, 2016 09:34

By Anthony Hernandez

Ghostbusters is either a horrifically unfunny, uninspired, unoriginal mess – or it’s a decently acted, sometimes hilarious, sometimes excitingly spooky summer funfest. I can’t decide which. Being a huge fan of the original (and frankly, who isn’t), I wanted to hate this movie. I’ve wanted to hate it since I found out this isn’t a sequel, rather a reboot; but I can’t hate it, because it was just a lot of fun. And isn’t that what matters? Maybe…

This Ghostbusters lacks originality because its plot is practically the same as the original. From set up to action set pieces to even some of the dialogue (much of this, I understand, was supposed to be an homage to the original) is just flat out a rip-off of the much better movie upon which this was based. Except, the jokes aren’t quite as funny, the visuals are mostly bloated (yet oddly beautiful) CGI, the villain is completely forgettable (seriously, what was his name?), and the whole cast is sometimes lacking in chemistry.

Despite the Internet’s contrarian mindset to an all female cast, however – they manage to pull it off. Kristin Wiig and Melissa McCarthy play a pair of academics who are estranged due to differences in the paths they chose in life. Wigg and McCarthy are as strong as they ever are, except I wish they would get some new material, instead of schlepping us through their usual schlock – which gets eye-rollingly tedious at times. Leslie Jones, on occasion, lives up to the fears we all had about her character being painfully stereotyped. And Kate McKinnon absolutely steals the show. In fact, she was the best thing about this movie and she has the best scene during the climax. In fact, let’s just make her the lead in the sequel – and there will be a sequel. The set up was obvious.

Okay, so what makes this movie so dang fun that I just can’t hate it? The actual ghostbusting is just flat out amazing to watch. The new gadgets are ridiculously cool – giving our heroines way more options than just simply catching and holding ghosts. Some of the visuals (mostly the ones that weren’t painfully reliant on 3D) were exciting and pretty to look at. The cameos of the original cast were mostly wasted on pointless auxiliary sequences that didn’t matter to the plot – however, Bill Murray actually steals the few minutes he’s on screen, and eventually comes to a hilarious end, which seems like a going trend for Murray. I couldn’t help but be reminded of his (much better) cameo in Zombieland.

All in all, Ghostbusters tries to be something it both is and isn’t. Does it fail? Yeah, in the end it probably fails. Was it a lot of fun to watch? Absolutely. So, I suppose, it isn’t completely dead in the water… it just never truly lives.