Boy, oh boy. Girl, oh girl. The new, gender-bending Ghostbusters really started off
rough. A mansion tour guide spouts off several lame lines, and I'm as stone-faced as his
tour group. One EVP fart and a gallon of ghost vomit later, and I'm still
struggling to smile. All that hate circling the internet before the movie even came out seemed to have some merit.
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| Leslie Jones |
However, somewhere along the way, Ghostbusters started to
have a few moments - moments where I cracked a smile and some charm oozed.
These moments were all mostly in the second act when the crew was assembled.
Leslie Jones was probably my favorite of the crew, despite the tokenism of her
character. Director Paul Feig wants to make a movie that promotes representation, but he
stumbles into the very same pitfall he's trying to cover up. Why couldn't
Leslie Jones be a scientist and Melissa McCarthy be a subway worker?
Also, Chris Hemsworth is a handsome, solidly-built devil (the movie beats you over the head with this fact), but his
dumb blonde shtick was... dumb. Sure, Feig was using Hemsworth to lash out at a dumb blonde female stereotype, but he's lashing out in the wrong movie. Annie Potts and
Sigourney Weaver represented strong, independent women in the original
Ghostbusters, not women reduced to lame my cat/Mike Hat jokes.
Good grief, I started off complimenting the movie and ended
up ranting. I might as well keep going. The villain is lame and underdeveloped,
the obvious ad-libbing is truly dreadful, the Fall Out Boy version
of the Ghostbusters theme is an abomination, and the climatic battle during the
third act feels like it was just thrown together.
Whew, it sounds like I'm completely trashing it. Look, it's
an okay movie, alright? Like I said, it has moments. That's all I can give it.
Ghostbusters is now available at the Franklin County Library!
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