Turns out all those misogynistic Internet trolls were really worrying for nothing. Paul Feig’s “Ghostbusters” hardly remakes the original comedy classic and instead invents new characters and themes to serve the same concept. The fan service may even be the film’s weakest aspect. And guess what nerds? The girls in this movie are pretty funny after all.
Rather than try and fail to recreate Dr. Peter Venkman and company with a younger cast or with women, gone are Venkman’s playboy charms, his slacker attitude and his sarcastic one-liners that only Bill Murray can do. Instead, Feig’s All-Female “Ghostbusters” finds ways for women to be funny in the way they do best. Feig plays to the strengths of Kirsten Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones. Wiig plays equal parts awkward, timid and crazy as she would on SNL. McCarthy has the aggressive boisterousness and physical comedy necessary for such a wacky story. Jones gives the film a much needed black presence and down to Earth, angry attitude. And McKinnon proves to be the true breakout, a real weirdo constantly wearing a fiendish smirk, raised eyebrows, hair gone awry and a sense of mystery in her voice. She honestly might be possessed by a ghost.
When they’re all together on screen, they’re unsurprisingly hilarious, and the film is at its best when Feig and Katie Dippold’s energetic, screwball dialogue gets set loose. The quartet have a fantastic back and forth about a Hearse that they can use as the Ghostbusters wagon, rattling off non-sequiturs about how odd it is to not check the trunk for a body, all culminating in McKinnon saying, “I can think of 50 uses for a cadaver today.”
Feig’s “Ghostbusters” isn’t too dissimilar from the original on a plot level. Wiig’s character loses her tenure and job as a professor and goes into business with the rest in order to research ghost sightings all caused by the same madman (Neil Casey) trying to conjure the apocalypse. But Feig takes the source material far more seriously than Ivan Reitman ever did. The film goes overboard on a special effects level, and several of the ghost hunting set pieces border on action horror rather than campy charm. Egon and Stantz were total bookworms in the original, but Venkman was there to wink at the camera and remind everyone that this is all a joke. The new “Ghostbusters” lacks that character, and it gets weighed down and drags when Feig goes all out in the film’s CGI spectacle finale.
Arguably the film’s best moments have nothing to do with ghosts and could even be a scene in “Bridesmaids.” McCarthy has a running feud with a Chinese delivery boy who is incapable of giving her a decent proportion of soup and meat. And Chris Hemsworth, Thor himself, is a real standout as the Ghostbusters’ clueless, yet hunky secretary. They tell him to not listen and he covers his eyes. Not that he has any lenses in his glasses. And he’s full of wisdom: “You know an aquarium is a submarine for fish.”
Of course Feig isn’t oblivious to the controversy this film has caused since its unveiling, and “Ghostbusters” responds to much of that criticism. “Ain’t no bitches gonna hunt no ghosts,” Wiig reads from a YouTube comment section. Feig not only gives them an opportunity to be funny, but to wield guns and bombs and act like badasses in a way that’s always been reserved for men. The original “Ghostbusters” was fairly bookish, but the amount of scientific jargon these girls spew seems to spit in the face of all the movies that failed to pass the Bechdel Test. And Feig knows that women often don’t get the credit they deserve for doing the work of a man, so in turn, the government suppresses the apocalypse and the female Ghostbusters don’t become the folk heroes they should be.
It’s likely this will become par for the course in Hollywood moving forward. Beloved properties and franchises will get remade, with or without casts full of women, and talented directors will make the movie they want with some corporate approved wallpaper. In the case of “Ghostbusters,” we get a Paul Feig movie, complete with rapid fire dialogue, surprise comedic performances by serious actors, and just a few too many choreographed action scenes.
It’s a film that’s funny and still manages to respond to all the hate without even blinking. Feig ain’t afraid of no trolls…I mean…ghosts.
3 stars