I watched Ghostbusters this week.
A movie that was mired in controversy from the very beginning. Specifically from fanboys of the original who were horrified to find that the characters made famous by Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, and Ernie Hudson had been replaced by a group of women for the reboot.
Further controversy followed when Leslie Jones, a popular black actress from Saturday Night Live (SNL), was made a blue collar worker while the three white actresses were all scientists. With the sensitivity raging in America at the moment surrounding black actors typically being boxed into supporting or lesser roles, this added some fuel to the fire.
And despite making over $160 million at the box office the movie was considered a financial failure as well.
But was it really that bad?
I grew up with the original Ghostbusters, so it was part of my movie heritage so to speak. I was pretty nervous when I saw it was being rebooted with a new cast in anyway, just because of the brilliance of the original actors. But I am a huge Kristen Wiig fan (she was incredible!) and a Melissa McCarthy fan as well (she could have been better) and the trailers looked amazing to me. So, I was sufficiently anticipatory.
And I absolutely loved it. It was much better than the dismal second Ghostbusters outing, which I was not a huge fan of. And it was laugh-out-loud funny with a hint of scare and maintained the pace and laughs the whole way through. It really felt like a good movie on par with the original.
Kate McKinnon (another SNL fan favourite) as Jillian Holtzmann, scientist and hardware expert, pretty much stole the show. Described by herself and director Paul Feig as a “glorious weirdo” she refuses to be boxed into any of the typical characters Hollywood loves to create for women and constantly takes control with her gadget upgrades and off-kilter social skills.
To answer the critics, each of the four women are actually playing strong leading roles, largely outside of the walls of convention. Leslie Jones as Patty Tolan probably does have the most stereotyped of the roles, but her work as a Metropolitan Transit Authority worker has a sense of parody to it (as well as a nod to Ernie Hudson’s role in the first movie), as if a tongue in cheek reference to the negativity of Hollywood typecasting. The movie itself is full of in-jokes and cameos from most of the original cast which would suggest this.
Just a whole of fun
Any remake of a classic is going to receive criticism. But when the noise quietens down I really believe this Ghostbusters will stand its ground. Chris Hemsworth (known to us all as Marvel character Thor) is hilarious as an anti-typecast male model turned secretary and one of the dumbest characters on film, also providing many of the background laughs (like when he covers his eyes so that he can’t hear a piercing scream). It seems like the cast as a whole had a lot of fun making this movie and it translates to the big screen.
Whether or not you saw the original, I would recommend Ghostbusters as a not-too-be-taken-too-seriously movie worth watching with a bunch of mates.
And make sure you stick around for the credits as one of the best cameos of them all happens there.