Ghostbusters

I don't know, even after many years this one is still controversial. I think it's cooled down a lot with another "Ghostbusters" film being released since this one. The original 1984 movie is kind of a "lightning-in-a-bottle" type deal. The sequel with the original cast altogether wasn't that great. The "Force Awakens" style Hollywood nostalgia money grab wasn't pretty mediocre. This remake is awful. You can make a movie like "Ghostbusters" or "Back to the Future" that just has a very original plot and concept, and no matter how badly you want the dollars that came with it, it's always gonna be a hollow attempt.

Man, this one is very bad though. Like almost insufferably obnoxious and stupid. It's disappointing because I honestly have nothing bad to say about any of the people who worked on the film. I liked a lot of the cast members in other projects like "Saturday Night Live" and "The Office." Chris Hemsworth is really funny, but they didn't even try to give us any chemistry between him and Kristin Wiig like they were teasing throughout the whole film. Not even anything like a funny joke. Just short little jokes about how sexy she thought he was or something.

The story is more or less a retread of the original's plot points, but I can at least give them the complement that it's a different one? Like at least not a beat-for-beat remake? Kristin Wiig's character is the only Ghostbuster that I liked, all three of the other ones really got on my nerves and the actresses all seemed like they were trying way too hard to just force jokes that didn't come naturally. I was laughing at some points, but at most of the others they just fell completely flat on their face.

Really terrible special effects and awful jokes mixed with extremely obnoxious forced attempts at poop and queef humor (yes there was a terrible queef joke in this that obviously went over like a wet fart) made this one incredibly hard to watch. And for that reason I would only recommend this movie to those with a very high level of curiosity or if you're a "Ghostbusters" fanatic, which I guess by this point most of them have already made up their minds on the 2016 version. It gets relegated to a footnote in movie history, like "hey remember back in 2016 when they tried to remake 'Ghostbusters' with an all-female cast?" That's really all there is to it.

I passionately dislike this movie as a Ghostbusters movie. Let alone the fact that it's also a bad movie but it's just- no! Rated higher than Ghostbusters II and they call themselves critics!? Its the worst in the series. Not in a sexist way but they might've created some of the dumbest most boring characters ever. Afterlife, though there isn't much development they still had decent characters (Paul Rudd was good but unfunny) It's just really stupid and to corny. I know Ghostbusters is a comedy series in general but this is just brainless and unfunny mish mash of a generic alien invasion film but with ghosts. . Yeah, it's got some alright ghosts and good VFX but it 50% just recycles the plot of the original! I mean if you "critics" are still gonna give Ghostbusters II a what, like 5? Well at least it has a unique story! It's just like your usual horror/science fiction "Oh look the paranormal is haunting all of the city!" Thing. It just tries to be chaotic and cinematic and you know what!? Its just a disgusting monster mess. Bad humor, unoriginal plot, but some cool ghosts and ghouls!

.... to quote a good Columbia (Sony) film from the classic era, trashing the fans before the film even comes out. But that was what Sony did when they got a negative reaction from their trailers and could see the train wreck that was coming that would be the release of this film.

The humor in this film is very forced, broad, and silly, where the original Ghostbusters film featured dry intelligent humor often coming from just who the characters were and how they interacted.

The villain was just awful. He seemed like he was yanked straight out of a cartoon or comic book. The scene at the rock concert - which is shown in trailers - is just goofy. It was like I was watching live action Scooby Doo. Throwing a story into the middle of a concert never really bodes well unless you want to conjure up images of rubber suited turtles doing the 'ninja rap'.

And last but not least, this film has absolutely zero problem defying the rules that are established. Proton beams hold the ghosts, the traps capture them until they're ready to be shoved off into a containment unit. They follow the same rules throughout most of the film, but then near the end, the Ghostbusters start using proton beams as if they were able to destroy ghosts, gunslinger style. What the??

Because there are fans of this franchise going back 35 years, history matters. And this installment just destroyed all of that. This is not the worst film ever made, but it is definitely not worth your time.

What's to say? At this point the movie is so mired in controversy that any opinion on it seems like a political statement more than a movie review. But here we go anyway - I didn't like it. It feels less like a movie with an idea (in this case a recycled one) and more like one of the many subpar comedies we have today where a few comedians who are friends in real life get together and give us two hours of smug back-patting. It offers nothing memorable of its own, just a few reworked things from the original movie, which was a classic with many iconic images and scenes. The only thing anyone will remember about this is the controversy surrounding it. I don't care much for Melissa McCarthy or Leslie Jones but I do like Kristen Wiig and I'm trying very hard to like Kate McKinnon (perhaps too hard). None of these women are impressive here. Chris Hemsworth's character is used too much. It's an obvious joke that doesn't get funnier the more you tell it. Ultimately the problem with this movie isn't that "women aren't funny," so much as comedy writers today are very lazy and uninspired.

I'm afraid this is not a good film.

I like some things of it. Some people complain about the CGI but I really think the monsters/phantasm were good and it's the only one thing that is better than the OG (obviously due to tech limitations at that time). I also think some of the scenes at the end work even they are merely a copy of the OG and not better than it. I also liked some of the origin details, like the logo or the song.

However, this film has 4 major issues:

1st, the cast. Leslie Jones is the best one, she knows when to do her thing, when to stop, when to listen, she is funny, it doesn't feel forced. McKinnon is super praised and I get why. Even if I didn't love her role - sometimes it seems she replaced the lack of any substance by weird expressions all the time - she is charismatic and I can clearly see her working very well with a better plot. But then...Melissa McCarthy is so bland here, so insipid, I can't even remember a single take from her. Wigg, on the other hand...I would prefer to forget what I remember. There is one good moment from her (when she met Hemsworth character) but all the rest is super annoying, super unnatural and not funny. Hemsworth's role is funny (in fact, the funniest when it works) and good to see until...it's too repetitive and more of the same.

2nd, the plot/story. I'm still trying to find out how do you want to reboot a classic film with this story to tell. It doesn't make sense. It would work potentially as a stand-alone episode if they decided to create a TV series with 12 episodes per season, as a film is not enough. After 15 minutes, I don't even remember the villain and why he did what he did. I don't understand how things scalated so quickly.

3rd, the editing. What an atrocious thing. This film would work so much better with less 20/25 minutes, with much less stupid (and weak) jokes...sometimes you can even see when they did several takes with scenes not matching from different angles. Yeah, that bad.