Review: They’re the Ghostbusters, Deal With It

Jill Pantozzi | July 15th, 2016

After a year of tumultuous online behavior, it was with great trepidation I sat in the theater waiting for Paul Feig’s Ghostbusters to play out. This is not Ghostbusters, this is the new Ghostbusters. And I’m really ok with that.

[Editor’s Note: This review will contain few spoilers but its comments are open season. Proceed at your own risk.]

Like any wildly hyped film, reboots in particular, Ghostbusters could have been a disaster of biblical proportions. Thankfully, I did not find that to be the case. I didn’t think Ghostbusters was THE BEST FILM EVER but rather a really good film that left me with a positive experience I was glad to have had.

At the start of the movie it appears as if Feig is going to pull a Star Wars: The Force Awakens and follow the same type of plot and emotional beats as the first film in the franchise. There’s the “skeptic,” two others working together already, and a fourth person who joins a bit later in the game. But thankfully, and smartly to my mind, Feig then breaks out of the mold making this a true reboot. Granted, I loved that The Force Awakens stuck so closely to A New Hope but not everyone thought so. I’m sure we’ll get the same two sides of the coin for Ghostbusters as well with some saying it should have been less like the original and others saying it wasn’t enough like the original. You can’t win over everyone.

But Ghostbusters won me over and that’s saying something. If you follow my work you know I don’t cover a lot of comedy and that’s because I’m very particular about it and so don’t end up watching much. And to be sure, 1984’s Ghostbusters was a comedy but I always saw it as sci-fi first. 2016’s Ghostbusters, while filled with the paranormal, feels much more like a pure comedy film to me. That said, I still preferred the more subtle comedy in the film (Kate McKinnon’s casual zingers, for instance) than the over-the-top physical comedy (Melissa McCarthy getting tossed around like a rag doll in the alley). It was high and low rather than an even keel.

While I found all of them unique, lovable, and charming, the characters needed some work. You could tell they were trying to get through a great deal of story and keep things moving along (which sadly also left me feeling like the third act was a bit of a bloated mess) but Kristen Wiig’s Erin Gilbert got the most characterization out of all the Ghostbusters. McCarthy’s Abbey Yates and Leslie Jones’ Patty Tolan got a little bit of care but McKinnon’s Holtzmann didn’t have much at all. She was very simply the quirky science nerd, which I loved, but it would have been nice to find out more about her. The satire of Chris Hemsworth’s Kevin was a good one but perhaps stretched too thin for how much he was actually utilized.

Ghostbusters made me laugh, and it made me laugh a lot. Thanks to McKinnon, it also made me feel more bisexual than I have in my entire life. While she flirts a bit with Wiig’s character and Wiig flirts helplessly with Hemsworth’s Kevin, there’s thankfully no romance to be had in the film. While the movie itself may have been made out to be part of some big gender war, there was a refreshing lack of pointing out that these characters were female. (And yes, it passes the Bechdel Test with both arms tied behind its back.) While there were a few gender-specific jokes, not once did anyone, the Ghostbusters included, doubt they could do the job at hand because they were women. They just did it, fears and all (which is normal for anyone). I can’t tell you how refreshing and important that is, especially for the younger crowds that will surely be seeing this film.

Besides four women jumping head first into scientific and technical work, the other big standout for me from Ghostbusters is the focus on friendship. In one of the few breaks for emotional content, Erin recounts her youth. A time when she was an outcast for thinking ghosts were real. She finally found a kindred spirit, as it were, in Abby. And while they’re meant to be almost lifelong pals, there’s also a touching moment later in the film from Holtzmann. It’s played for laughs but any nerd watching will find it hard not to relate to finding people to care about, and who care about you, who share your “weird” passions.

The new ghost busting equipment is cool, if not upgraded a bit too quickly and often by Holtzmann (I’d bet there’s a lot of this on the cutting room floor if the quick edits reveal anything) but there’s no rules like “don’t cross the streams” to get hung up on. Basically, just don’t shoot your partners. The action scene in the third act may be a bit too much for some people but it’s very 2010s action film style and personally got me really hyped as a woman to see other women kicking butt in a “cool” way.

While this movie did break new (and sometimes confusing – ghost balloons??) ground, there were plenty of hat tips to the original film and perfectly placed cameos by the old cast. Harold Ramis’ comes in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment at Columbia as a statue bust. They were absolutely respectful to the original crew without being beholden to what they did in the past. Ghostbusters isn’t a perfect film, few are, but it certainly succeeded as a reboot. It gave audiences a complete story but set things up with ease for a sequel. And while you have to wait through the end of the credits to get that information, you’re treated to a full credit-roll’s worth of extra content in the meantime. This new Ghostbusters may not be for everyone but it will be important for so many more. I, for one, am glad it exists.