Ghostbusters Review

You might wonder why so many films now are remakes or reboots of old franchises. Usually; it's because the original films are old and with modern technologies and hindsight, their stories can be expanded and made into something better.

Remakes can work. Invasion of the Body Snatchers, John Carpenters' The Thing, Scarface, True Grit, The Fly and many, many others have proven that remakes can work, given the right circumstances, attention and love.

But a question that lingers is; if a film has a legitimate problem, in that, even with all new technologies and hindsight, if it has no chance of surpassing the original, is it worth remaking?

Common sense would say no, but, in the case of director Paul Feig's 2016 remake of Ghostbusters, investors must have seen something in it's proposal that I didn't in its final product, because, not only is the film a unfunny catastrophe that was somehow worse than my lowest expectations, but it's a film that's journey from pre-production to end product needs to be studied and a lesson learnt in how not to make a film.

As mentioned; the film is a gender swapped remake of the original Ghostbusters but with a new villain and modern day setting. There are some deviations; there's more governmental involvement this time but less establishing the ghostbusters as a business of glorified pest-exterminators.

There's also a more detailed look at the group's struggles for creditability, as opposed to the original which only real hurdle was Walter Peck (although they subsequently went back to this well with Ghostbusters 2).

The cast was always going to be an uphill struggle as the chemistry and humour of the original four would be nigh-on impossible to surpass and, of course, the film fails miserably. Kristen Wiig's Erin is the main character; an academic trying to make it in a prestigious university when a book from her past comes to back to haunt her.

Whilst the second most-grounded of the team, Wiig barely has any comedic bite and simply serves as one of the audience avatars to the more zany Abby and zanier Holtzmann, but I'll get to them in due course.

The other avatar and easily the best of the four despite the film's marketing is Lesley Jones' Patty. A subway worker who joins the team because of her spectral encounter at work and her resources, Patty is one of the only characters who notes how grave and terrifying the encounters are and, whilst some of the more louder, less funny and grating moments of the film are from her, other times she'll have some great wit, which should have been written and utilised more.

Whilst this half of the team is somewhat decent, the remaining half is anything but. Melissa McCarthy's Abby is a louder and more ghost and Wanton obsessed version of Erin. Whilst her first appearance shows her as nearly reprehensible with no cares for her recently-fired friend, she becomes more endearing by the end of the film, even if her character is just spouting technobabble or complaining about her takeaways.

The absolute pits of the team is Kate McInnon's Jillian Holtzmann. McInnon's performance is a scenery chewing nightmare that never ends, a character only relatable to sociopaths and three year olds. She has no indoor voice and her comedy comes from her zany, over the top antics that take any potential tension or foundation in any scene.

That and Chris Hemsworth's mindbogglingly awful character of Kevin the receptionist. A man literally too dumb to exist and serves purely as eye candy for the audience and Erin's character (who goes from a smart, independent woman to a fawning, drooling idiot for his look despite his utter stupidity), if his role was gender swapped with a pretty girl, there would be absolute mayhem but here, any and all laughs are made at how stupid he is.

Rounding off the principle cast is main villain Rowan, played by Neil Cassey. Rowan is a loner who dreams of causing an apocalypse and, despite Cassey's limited amount of screen time, he does act quite unhinged and menacing, even if how his plan came to fruition is literally summarised that "he's a loner".

A final mention has to go to the original cast members who return for cameos as unrelated characters. Whilst Annie Potts and Sigourney Weaver are acceptable, the rest serve very little purpose and are just jarring. Bill Murray in particular is a depressing and woeful sight to behold despite his past comedic masterclasses.

Whilst the performances are mostly a let down, the writing; the meat and bones of the film is just lowest common denominator drivel. Whilst the original Ghostbusters fell on wit, sarcasm and chemistry of the cast; the remake falls on varying degrees of shouting, unfunny comments and a lack of chemistry with the cast.

There's more gross out humour than before (including a fart and queef joke within seconds of each-other) along with quips that are just groan inducing. They'll be the odd moment that garnered a chuckle (mostly from Patty), but with a lot of comedy focusing on Kevin's stupidity or Holtzmann's wackiness, the film's pandering is a massive hinderance that only becomes more insulting to the audience's intelligence as the film progresses.

The original film dealt with the more scarier elements of the plot with a degree of seriousness when the needs must. Whilst the opening of the remake is actually a well filmed and quite tense scene, the rest of the film never returns to this tone. I never realised that pringles could be such a deterrent to comedy and tension but always guessed as much, but the film confirms it with a ridiculous scene early on that sets this true tone of the film.

The ending is a jarring action sequence and, with no real build up to, seeing the characters capable of the feats performed with little backstory and constant failed training and equipment experiments; it's nearly as unbelievable as ghosts actually existing. There's more to mention, but it's hard to get into without getting into major spoilers.

The film is a conglomerate of neon-saturated colours smashing against darker shots or brightly lit shots with garish colours that make the film look like a cartoon. It's not disorientating, but the film is an ugly one, with special effects and ghost designs that look decent, but wholly unimaginative.

When the film finally reached the end, I was astounded. I had hoped for some decent sparks in an otherwise flawed remake. I wanted a franchise I grew up with to get that second lease of life with newer stories full of humour and imagination.

But instead, this incarnation of Ghostbusters made me fondly remember the '84 original more and how bad it should have turned out, but instead became one of the funniest, imaginative and quotable films ever made.

The 2016 reimagining of Ghostbusters is a supremely stupid, unimaginative, unfunny and insipid mess that revels in the smell of it's own farts (or queefs) to the delight of no-one but those who deemed it entertaining as a political statement or those with humour set at such a low brow, it's as deep as the dead.

The original was a grounded, incredibly witty and somewhat intelligent comedy, despite the ludicrous premise whilst Feig's film is a neon-saturated, loud and obnoxious piece of celluloid devoid of anything. 

It's characters are mostly caricatures, it's humour aimed at plant life and only purpose retrospectively; is to serve as a quality check against the superior-in-every-way original.

To steal a line from an unrelated film

"Who you gonna call? Someone else..."

3/10

H

@Retcon_Nation