Ghost Busters (2016)

I'll be the first to admit that the internet gender war over Ghostbusters isn't particularly interesting to me. Neither the Social Justice Warriors who demand that it is every woman's responsibility to see this movie nor the Anti-Cootie Brigade's demand that it is every man's responsibility to not see it concerns me. After all, at the end of the day the new Ghostbusters is just another in a fairly long line of remakes of movies from the 1980s. Truth to tell, so many remakes of 80s movies have been done in the past 7 or so years that I sometimes feel I am reliving the decade.

Oh, I get that absolutely nothing I write in this review is going to change your mind if you're one of the people who has already decided if this is good or not. The battle lines have been clearly drawn for two years and people who have not even seen it or are even likely to see it already know everything they want to know about it. However, if you're one of those few people in the world with the intelligence to know that you can't really have an informed opinion on a movie without seeing it, please feel free to read on.

The real questions that needs to be asked of this movie--indeed the only ones that should be asked--is "is it good? Is it funny?". If the answer to that is yes, then gender doesn't really matter, now does it?

Point in fact, the answer does happen to be yes. This is a good, funny movie.

Is it as good as the original? Don't be absurd. Of course it isn't. But I would point out that none of the 80s redos have been, either. It helps that its not a beat for beat remake. It does take some ideas and cameos from the original but it is also its own thing.

Dr. Erin Gilbert (Kristen Wiig) is about to make tenure at Columbia University when a ghost from her past comes back. In this case the ghost happens to be a book she wrote years ago with a friend, Abigail Yates (Melissa McCarthy). Yates has republished the book much to Gilbert's dismay. When Gilbert goes to ask Yates to pull the book, she gets dragged along to investigate a haunted mansion by Yates and her new assistant Jillian Holtzman (a wonderfully unhinged Kate McKinnon). When a video of the investigation goes viral--ending with a slimed Gilbert declaring her belief in ghosts--the trio gets fired and decides to set up shop hunting ghosts. They are shortly joined by former MTA worker Patty (Leslie Jones) and dumber than a brick secretary Kevin (Chris Hemsworth). Things get complicated by the usual bureaucrats trying to shut them down while a creepy janitor wants to unleash the Ghostpocalypse on the city.

I won't claim as others have that this is funnier than the 1984 original. Then again, the original is one of the top ten comedies of the 1980s with three top comedians at the top of their game directed by a comedy director at the top of his game. It's an impossible bar to measure up to and even the original cast fell short with Ghostbusters 2 in 1989.

That said, this version also has four top comics at the height of their game directed by a comic director at the top of his game. If this film falls short its not for want of trying. Its just that the original is just that classic. But this movie has nothing to be ashamed of. It has plenty of laughs, especially from Hemsworth, who threatens to steal the show from his four co-stars.

All of the surviving stars make cameos along with a few of the ghosts. After a while the cameos become slightly distracting which is probably the biggest knock on the movie. Some of them sort of work while others just plain fall flat. Dan Akroyd's unfortunately falls into the latter category.

But perhaps the most interesting and fun aspect of this is the 3-D. Unlike many modern 3-D movies, this one actually bothers with gimmick shots! Imagine that! Ghosts and Proton beams go flying out of the screen with fair regularity. It's not quite as insane as an 80s 3-D movie and it would look a bit better if it had been actually shot in 3-D as opposed to being a conversion, but it also doesn't shy away from what makes 3-D fun. It's actually well worth watching in 3-D, something that can't always be said nowadays.

But then again, it's just plain worth watching. While it's not going to make you forget the original, it's also not the disaster the ACB was hoping it would be. It's a good, fun time at the movies during the summer that, since it runs under two hours, wisely doesn't overstay it's welcome.

I hope this movie does well at the box office. NOT to vindicate the SJWs and make the ACB look foolish, but simply because it deserves to.