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Ghostbusters - An unneeded remake
The title says it…why? There are probably very few people living in the US who have not seen the original Ghostbusters movie at some time. The logo is still familiar, kids buy costumes at halloween, they’re on lunch boxes, it comes around on TV, the video is in almost every library, on VHS, DVD and Blue Ray. So the question is, why do a remake? What can a new version of this venerable classic add to the story? For me, the answer was nothing. Yeah, the FX were amped up, but the cheesy 80’s FX were part of the charm of the original. The new ones were obviously copied from the old one, but lack the charm. They’re just, well bigger and more numerous.
The original movie had four elements that made it likable, the buddy story, the ghost hunt story, the New York setting and the understated comedy elements. The new one comes up short on all of those. The story is similar. Erin Gilbert (Kristin Wiig) is a physics professor, coming up on possible tenure, trying to keep her ghost hunting past under wraps until her tenure is finalized. Abby Yates (Melissa McCarthy) is still ghost hunting and trying to sell the book that she and Erin had written years ago. Abby has a sketchy assistant, Jillian Holtzman (Kate McKinnon). Meanwhile Patty Tolan (Leslie Jones) is a subway station attendant who has just had a paranormal experience down in the tunnel. The four of them become the unplanned team that has to fight off the biggest paranormal outbreak the Big Apple has seen in quite a while.
Slimer is there, as are a number of somewhat familiar spooks, there’s lots of green slime, and the Busters have jumpsuits with backpacks that shoot out streams of protons. There is Mayor Bradley (Andy Garcia), the guy who doesn’t want all this publicity for his city and a receptionist, the exceptionally ill-suited Kevin (Chris Hemsworth), who seems to really want to be an Australian dancer. A number of other familiar Saturday Night Live cast members make cameos and Bill Murray has a small role as an elder critic of ghostbusting who doesn’t last long. Dan Ackroyd, Ernie Hudson and Sigourney Weaver have cameos. I’m guessing that if you’ve seen the trailer, you know the rest of the story.
So, how was it? I was mildly entertained, but nothing more than that. The setup and plot were predictable, as was the ending. Nothing new was added to the old story except for the obvious gender reversal, which turned out to be as much of a disappointment as the rest of the movie. My first criticism is that the buddy story angle just didn’t work here. The four characters were just that, nothing about them jelled as a team. Much of the characters and acting looked like it was a long version of an SNL skit, put together quickly for something quick. Kate McKinnon especially, didn’t really do much except channel a couple of her SNL characters and act weird. No buddies there.
As for New York, in the old movie, it was a character, but not in this one. Having been around New York a lot I kept hoping to see some familiar places, but that was not to be. GB was actually filmed in Boston, with taller buildings and a few skyline scenes obviously digitized into the contrived backgrounds. New York didn’t get to be a character in the movie, at least not the New York I visit.
As for ghost busting, anybody has turned on a cable converter in recent years can’t help but see the many and varied versions of that, so it’s nothing new. The new version of GB uses the familiar devices from the old movie but acts as though they just invented them.
In regard to acting, the new version of the movie made me appreciate how much I enjoyed the understated performances of the characters in the old version. Bill Murray, especially, can do a lot with small gestures, something lost on the current cast. Once again, it all had the look of a much-too-long SNL skit. I have to admit that I don’t like Melissa McCarthy very much in anything, but I do enjoy the rest of the cast, just not here. The only new character I liked was Leslie Jones’s Patti. Jones can be funny doing almost anything. Completing the team’s gender reversal with Chris Hemsworth as receptionist just made no sense. I had the impression that he could have been digitized into the movie during post production when the Australian lab that was in the credits was doing all of the digital animation. Nothing about him melded into the sets, rest of the cast or the story. Direction by Paul Feig was adequate in a television sort of way. Nothing much there either.
In short, save your money unless you just need a couple hours of mild entertainment. The original Ghostbusters is much better and even the lesser Ghostbusters II works better than this. I like most of the cast and wanted this to be better, but, alas, it was not. One thing they DID do of course, was to prepare us for a sequel. In the last few seconds, one of the characters says something like “who is Zul?”, presumably preparing an “eager” audience for another round of ghost busting. I will probably skip it.
The title says it…why? There are probably very few people living in the US who have not seen the original Ghostbusters movie at some time. The logo is still familiar, kids buy costumes at halloween, they’re on lunch boxes, it comes around on TV, the video is in almost every library, on VHS, DVD and Blue Ray. So the question is, why do a remake? What can a new version of this venerable classic add to the story? For me, the answer was nothing. Yeah, the FX were amped up, but the cheesy 80’s FX were part of the charm of the original. The new ones were obviously copied from the old one, but lack the charm. They’re just, well bigger and more numerous.
The original movie had four elements that made it likable, the buddy story, the ghost hunt story, the New York setting and the understated comedy elements. The new one comes up short on all of those. The story is similar. Erin Gilbert (Kristin Wiig) is a physics professor, coming up on possible tenure, trying to keep her ghost hunting past under wraps until her tenure is finalized. Abby Yates (Melissa McCarthy) is still ghost hunting and trying to sell the book that she and Erin had written years ago. Abby has a sketchy assistant, Jillian Holtzman (Kate McKinnon). Meanwhile Patty Tolan (Leslie Jones) is a subway station attendant who has just had a paranormal experience down in the tunnel. The four of them become the unplanned team that has to fight off the biggest paranormal outbreak the Big Apple has seen in quite a while.
Slimer is there, as are a number of somewhat familiar spooks, there’s lots of green slime, and the Busters have jumpsuits with backpacks that shoot out streams of protons. There is Mayor Bradley (Andy Garcia), the guy who doesn’t want all this publicity for his city and a receptionist, the exceptionally ill-suited Kevin (Chris Hemsworth), who seems to really want to be an Australian dancer. A number of other familiar Saturday Night Live cast members make cameos and Bill Murray has a small role as an elder critic of ghostbusting who doesn’t last long. Dan Ackroyd, Ernie Hudson and Sigourney Weaver have cameos. I’m guessing that if you’ve seen the trailer, you know the rest of the story.
So, how was it? I was mildly entertained, but nothing more than that. The setup and plot were predictable, as was the ending. Nothing new was added to the old story except for the obvious gender reversal, which turned out to be as much of a disappointment as the rest of the movie. My first criticism is that the buddy story angle just didn’t work here. The four characters were just that, nothing about them jelled as a team. Much of the characters and acting looked like it was a long version of an SNL skit, put together quickly for something quick. Kate McKinnon especially, didn’t really do much except channel a couple of her SNL characters and act weird. No buddies there.
As for New York, in the old movie, it was a character, but not in this one. Having been around New York a lot I kept hoping to see some familiar places, but that was not to be. GB was actually filmed in Boston, with taller buildings and a few skyline scenes obviously digitized into the contrived backgrounds. New York didn’t get to be a character in the movie, at least not the New York I visit.
As for ghost busting, anybody has turned on a cable converter in recent years can’t help but see the many and varied versions of that, so it’s nothing new. The new version of GB uses the familiar devices from the old movie but acts as though they just invented them.
In regard to acting, the new version of the movie made me appreciate how much I enjoyed the understated performances of the characters in the old version. Bill Murray, especially, can do a lot with small gestures, something lost on the current cast. Once again, it all had the look of a much-too-long SNL skit. I have to admit that I don’t like Melissa McCarthy very much in anything, but I do enjoy the rest of the cast, just not here. The only new character I liked was Leslie Jones’s Patti. Jones can be funny doing almost anything. Completing the team’s gender reversal with Chris Hemsworth as receptionist just made no sense. I had the impression that he could have been digitized into the movie during post production when the Australian lab that was in the credits was doing all of the digital animation. Nothing about him melded into the sets, rest of the cast or the story. Direction by Paul Feig was adequate in a television sort of way. Nothing much there either.
In short, save your money unless you just need a couple hours of mild entertainment. The original Ghostbusters is much better and even the lesser Ghostbusters II works better than this. I like most of the cast and wanted this to be better, but, alas, it was not. One thing they DID do of course, was to prepare us for a sequel. In the last few seconds, one of the characters says something like “who is Zul?”, presumably preparing an “eager” audience for another round of ghost busting. I will probably skip it.