The movie opens with a tour of Aldridge Mansion, a 19th century building in NYC. The tour guide offers an explanation of a locked basement where a murderous daughter was locked away. As the tour guide locks up for the night, the ghost wreaks havoc! Next we meet Erin Gilbert (Kristen Wiig), a Columbia physicist a few days from tenure, as she prepares to give a lecture. She is approached by Ed Mulgrave (Ed Begley Jr.) who asks her to investigate the ghost. Perplexed why he asks her, he shows her a book that she co-wrote about ghosts. She had disavowed the book and was now furious that the co-author had published it. That would be Abby Yates (Melissa McCarthy). This sets off a chain of events that ends with Erin getting fired from Columbia and helping to found the Ghostbusters.
Before I start criticizing this film, let me say that I immensely enjoyed Paul Feig's Spy and I am a huge fan of his webseries, Other Space. I thought it was great that most of the cast of Other Space had cameos in Ghostbusters. I have not seen Bridesmaids, which is apparently his magnum opus. That said, he missed the mark on this one by a wide margin.
Erin Gilbert is mostly a hopeless character, which is sad to say about a PhD physicist on tenure track at Columbia. Her pathetic "I'm moving offices" excuse to her former colleagues after she was fired reminded me of some of her less humorous characters on SNL. That she is completely tongue-tied and flustered around the abysmally stupid though very handsome Kevin is more groan-inducing than funny. Then she goes over the top with her embarrassing effort to get the mayor (Andy Garcia) to evacuate the city. She is literally carried away. A woman becomes completely hysterical in a 'feminist' remake and this should be funny. Wow.
Abby Yates is the straight character, if any qualifies. She is probably closest to being the Ray Stanz (Dan Ackroyd) of the group. She has a few zingers and is often the target of physical humor. Considering how she is usually the stand out character in films, she is fairly sedate here. There is a Rodney Dangerfield quality about Abby in that she doesn't get any respect.
Jillian Holtzmann (Kate McKinnon) is insane. Though presumably the Egon Spengler (Harold Ramis) character, she reminded me a lot of Gomez Addams as played by John Astin, only crazier. When not being nutty, she is creating ludicrous new gadgets and tools for the team, far exceeding anything previously seen. It changed the dynamic of ghost busting. It used to be that the proton packs were used to lasso the ghost and drag them into position to trap/contain them. That happens once in this version. After that, we have ghost shredders, ghost-blasting grenades, a ghost-punching gauntlet, and more. These Ghostbusters don't capture ghosts, they kill them! Really? Where do they go after they are killed? I must have missed the explanation. Holtzmann licks her proton pistol, she sings maniacally, she eats Pringles while Erin gets slimed. She's a mad, mad, mad scientist. Much too mad.
In the original, Winston (Ernie Hudson) was hired because the Ghostbusters were overwhelmed with calls. In this version, Patty (Leslie Jones) just 'joins the club' because she saw a ghost and saw the Ghostbusters in action. Then she repeatedly announces her regret of leaving the MTA to join what she thought was going to be like a book club. What? Her vast knowledge of NYC was interesting but made her little more than a walking version of Google. Of course, she also provided the hearse that becomes the new Ecto-1.
Instead of a smart-alecky Janine (Annie Potts), the new Ghostbusters have Kevin (Chris Hemsworth) the abysmally stupid hunk who is barely capable of answering a phone. It is more annoying than funny to have a character who repeatedly tries to grab something on the other side of a glass partition and is baffled that he is blocked. Maybe this time. Huh! It is amazing he can speak.
The villain is suitably weird but, in the end, he just chooses to lose. When confronted by a small army of soldiers, police officers, and Homeland Security, he possessed the lot of them and had them freeze. But when the Ghostbusters arrive, he sends waves of ineffective ghosts to fight them. When they defeat the ghosts and walk through the frozen soldiers, police, and Homeland Security, he offers to fight them. Why? Why not just freeze them like everyone else and win? Whereas the people he froze were no threat to him - bullets don't bother ghosts - the proton pack wielding ghostbusters are the ONLY ones who can stop him and they are the ones he doesn't freeze. This really grated!
The scene with the dean of Higgins offering the middle finger in an increasing variety of ways was painfully juvenile. So much of the film is this sort of cheap humor. Hey, it's the Chinese food delivery guy again with a pathetic excuse for wonton soup; that's so funny! Not. A tape recorded fart is the very definition of puerile humor. Obviously, the original Ghostbusters was not some highbrow affair but it didn't do fart jokes, inflating middle fingers, unfathomably stupid characters, and John Woo style gun battles with ghosts. This movie makes the original look cerebral!
The original cast all have cameos but as different characters. This is a reboot, not a continuation. Therefore, Bill Murray appears as a ghost skeptic, Dan Ackroyd as a seen-it-all cabbie, Ernie Hudson as Leslie Jones' uncle, Sigourney Weaver as Kate McKinnon's mentor, and Annie Potts as a hotel desk clerk. Harold Ramis appears as a bust at Columbia. Even Slimer and the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man appear. Though I liked to see them, it only kept reminding me how much better the original was.
Disappointing. Watch the original instead.
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