Who you gonna call!?
I can’t think of another example of a movie that is essentially a summer action/comedy blockbuster that faced such a daunting uphill struggle from the moment that it was announced. The lead up to the release of Ghostbusters saw the internet whipped into an increasingly hostile frenzy. It ran the spectrum from simple impersonal dismissal of the idea of any sort of reboot all the way to the kind of vile mud-slinging from the worst kind of comment section fanboys, passing through ‘Hollywood Has No Ideas Boulevard’ and ‘Ouch, My Childhood! Avenue’ along the way. Social media outlets have been awash with memes proclaiming that the four leads of the original movie “will always be the REAL Ghostbusters! No matter what Hollywood says!” Well done. Give yourselves a gold star, O truest of true fans. Even as I write this I have an internet tab open on a subreddit that is discussing an active campaign to derail the movie’s success by people horrified that the majority of early reviews aren’t the Batman Vs Superman shit-storm of negativity that they were no doubt expecting. Ghostbusters opened in the UK yesterday. It opens in the US in three days. These people are yet to even see it. I have seen the movie though and there’s good news and bad news. The twist is that they are both the exact same news. The rest just depends on your perspective and whether your opinion has already been cemented beforehand based on stubborn principle.
Considering then that Ghostbusters was facing such a battle in escaping the looming shadow of the original, it curiously goes to painstaking lengths to remind us of the shoulders upon which it stands at every available opportunity. Every familiar and iconic reference point is featured here; The fire station, Ecto-1, proton packs, traps and the jumpsuits are all there. All of which are given more story explanation than they ever had in 1984. Iconic adversaries such as Slimer and “The Destructor” himself Mr Stay Puft both make appearances and a huge portrait of the first proper spook that the girls encounter serves as a cursory nod to the 1989 sequel. Which is frankly all it deserves. As well as these visual cues, there are also a number of familial story beats. The opening scene features a hapless member of the public scared shitless by an unseen spook in their creepy workplace (it’s not a library). The titular heroines form their team of “professional paranormal eliminators” (thank you, Larry King!) after their kooky pursuits see them laughed out of their academic research positions. Elsewhere, their mid-level boss fight at a theatre during an Ozzy Osbourne show recalls the spirit of the original’s perfectly played hotel showdown with Slimer. Stay til the end of the credits and you’ll get a name drop that should be familiar to anyone.
Almost all the surviving stars of the originals are also here to lend their support and presumably their endorsement with cameos. How seamlessly they fit and how well they work however, runs a literal scale of Dan Aykroyd to Bill Murray. It is nice to see the old gang involved on some level, though and the brief but touching doff of the cap to the late Harold Ramis was particularly nice to see (honestly – it’s my secret theory that the worst of the naysayer trolls were the now grown up kids who were too stupid back then to realise that Egon was always as funny as Peter).
If you can strip away all preconceptions born from the old films though, the plain truth is that you are left with a movie that is both fun and funny enough to stand up on its own. Let’s get to answering what, whether you want to deny it or not, has proven to be the biggest question then. Did it matter that they went and made the Ghostbusters girls? Well, of course it didn’t. If the movie has any flaws – and it does – then I’m confident in saying that none of them lie with the decision to gender flip the team or with the cast members they chose. While the quartet are very much their own characters (and I cannot stress that point enough) you can still unmistakably see the ghost of each classic ‘Buster present in Wiig’s horndog skeptic mouthpiece Erin Gilbert, the child-like enthusiasm of McCarthy’s Abby Yates, McKinnon’s oddball resident super-nerd Jillian Holtzmann and Jones’ grounded, streetwise, non-scientist -ahem- “fourth” Ghostbuster, Patty Tolan. Their on screen chemistry is obvious and infectious and, much like the original movie, aside from the special effects and all the nonsense about ghosts, it is an ensemble comedy first and foremost and to that end it succeeds.
Sure the comedy is perhaps broader and, in parts, a lot more reliant on physical humour but pound-for-pound, gag-for-gag it is as funny as the original. Somewhat surprisingly though, the two cast members who were clearly drafted to carry the weight of the rebooted franchise with the strength of their box-office star power (Wiig and McCarthy, in case you are still wondering) routinely have scenes stolen from under their feet by Jones and McKinnon. The latter in particular should prove to be the break out favourite as Nerd Queen Holtzmann. All at once a brilliant engineer, but batshit insane. She’s socially awkward, but with the biggest swagger in the group and the kind of innocent sexy that seems to so often go hand in hand with the ‘wrench wench’ archetype (think Firefly‘s Kaylee Frye). A lot of the film’s biggest laughs come from Chris Hemsworth though, as painfully dim-witted secretary Kevin. He has fun supporting the main cast in a much more fleshed out and story central role than Janine Melnitz ever enjoyed, while gently poking fun at the endless examples of female eye-candy movie secretaries that came before him.
Where Ghostbusters really passes to ‘the other side’ in relation to it’s predecessor however are the ghosts themselves, particularly in the film’s typically overblown (in modern blockbuster style) third act climax. Obviously effects have come a long way since the original and the film is drenched in CGI by the end, with literally hordes of garish, though interestingly designed, spooks. When the first ghost is encountered at the start of the film, I was impressed in comparison to the ‘Library Ghost’ from the original film. By the final Times Square showdown however it felt much too overdone. I feel that they could have gone with a more minimal feel for the ghosts and pulled off an atmosphere closer to straight up horror (where necessary, of course) than even the original could ever have managed. The fight with the resident Big Bad also lacked the tension, weight and high stakes hopelessness of the throw-down with Gozer and Stay-Puft. Remember the guys on top of the apartment building with their barely tested proton guns, winging it in the face of a God? By the time the girls face down their decidedly Scooby-Doo-esque villain, we’ve seen them effectively engage an army of spectres. Mowing them down like a literal ‘Call of Duty: Ghosts’ with an arsenal of proton packs, ghost vacuum ‘the chipper’, a spook punching psycho-kinetic power fist, a ghost ‘shotgun’, ghost grenades and Holtzmann’s dual wielded pistol sized ghost blasters, which is naturally utilised with Assassin’s Creed-like skills. At the point where they are focus firing their weapons directly into the crotch of a Godzilla-sized incarnation of their own logo, while prepping the neat deus ex machina (or should it be “sanctus ex machina” in this case?), you’ll likely be feeling that they should’ve reeled it in a little bit and saved some for the sequel…because you better believe she’s coming…
