Ghostbusters

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.

"Ghostbusters" (2016), for those of you that might have missed any of my previous reviews, I'm a really big fan of "Ghostbusters" (1984). It's one of my top ten all-time favorite comedy films! However, the ones that came after it were the epitome of unnecessary. That being said, this "movie" is a whole different league. For all the wrong reasons! I've seen some pretty bad reboots and remakes in my life. But, this "film" is easily one of the top ten, if not top five, worst remakes I have ever seen in my life. Just typing about it is enough to make me cringe painfully! I remember when I saw the first teaser trailer. For a second, I thought: "cool! Are they going to bring back the original cast? It's more than likely not going to be as good as the original movie." But then, as soon as I saw the main characters, I said to myself: "wait, who are these people? Where are the Ghostbusters?" Yeah, you can probably already see where this is going. Just from seeing the trailer and knowing that it was going to be a remake, I could tell it was going to be a pile of filthy slime. However, that would be an insult to slime! "Ghostbusters" has a boring and cliched storyline, standard to terrible acting, and an abysmal soundtrack to try and tie this diarrhea stain together. The plot is, ghosts invade New York City and it's up to paranormal enthusiasts Erin Gilbert and Abby Yates, nuclear engineer Jillian Holtzmann, and subway worker Patty Tolan to team up and save the day. Yep, it's about as redundant as it sounds. Seen it! Seriously, if you've seen the original "Ghostbusters" film, then you've seen this one already. It's the exact same story, except the lead characters are played by women. Now, before you get all riled up about me saying that, I'm not going to debate that fact about this "movie", I'm just sticking with the storyline for now. I'll go into more details about the acting in a minute. Any way, the writing and pacing for this "film" is absolutely juvenile and embarrassing. Did no one proof-read the screenplay? It's like they were thinking: "how obnoxious can we make this movie?" Well, they more than succeeded on that fact. There are bad films out there where I cringe while I watch them, and this one is no exception. No more than five minutes went by where I didn't cringe once. I just sat there in depressed silence and awaited the glorious end credits. That's how much I hate this "movie"! It angers me, just as much as it bores me, which are the two worst things any film can do, in my opinion. I did not smile, let alone laugh one single time. Not one time! Bottom line, the people who wrote this script, and the people who green-lit production should really take a brain exam. Come up with some fresh new ideas already! As for the acting, it's overall terrible from the whole cast. Let me just say this, I have nothing against an all-female cast in any movie or TV show. As long as it has a purpose and is entertaining, that's all that matters. Now that being said, casting women as the Ghostbusters was a huge mistake. Their performances do nothing but insult the original film! The sad thing is, this "movie" has a decent cast lineup. I've seen the majority of these actors and actresses in other films, where they do a much better job. They can act, and a lot of them can be funny. So, what happened to them here? It's like director Paul Feig told them to forget about being funny, or putting on a good performance. He just ran the cameras for 116 minutes, and attempted to make a movie out of it. Don't even get me started on the cameos in this "film"! Wow, I can only imagine how humiliated they were when they had to subject themselves to this pile of garbage of a movie. I'm not going to mention their names at all, because I don't want to embarrass them at all. Thankfully, it appears that this "film" didn't ruin their reputations in the movie industry. As far as the soundtrack goes, it's about as abysmal as you can possibly get. There is nothing redeemable about this film score whatsoever. It's about as forgettable as music can be. Congratulations, Theodore Shapiro. You have successfully created one of the most dull soundtracks I've ever heard. To add insult to injury, there are multiple cover versions of the "Ghostbusters" theme. But, the worst one here, is easily the horrible "Ghostbusters" cover version by Fall Out Boy. That song is about as bad as it is pointless. The fact that I can even barely stand this unbearable excuse for a song, is a miracle. Although to be honest, even though the Ray Parker Jr. Version is used here, it still doesn't redeem a thing. If I were to rate film scores, this one would easily be on my top ten worst list, I'm not joking. Any way, why don't we go ahead and move on to the only two good elements in this piece of crap. The only good things are the sets/locations and the special effects. All of the sets/locations are great and give this "film" a decent atmosphere. You can't go wrong with filming your movie in New York City! Finally, as far as the special effects go, they are well-done and still hold up today. Which is no surprise, being released in 2016! "Ghostbusters" is yet another pointless reboot film that nobody asked for. I know I didn't! It's completely unnecessary in every sense of the word. I'm struggling to give this "movie" 2 out of 5 stars on my personal scale, which equates to 4 out of 10 IMDB stars. Just stick with the original "Ghostbusters" film. Even "Ghostbusters II" (1989) is better than this worthless reboot! Beware of this horrible "movie", and all that's affiliated with it. Otherwise, you might turn into a ghost yourself!

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.

Ghostbusters (2016)

1/2 (out of 4)

Wow, what on Earth were they thinking? I will freely admit that I love to see films remade. I mean, it gives the original some attention and in the best cases you end up with another good movie. In the worse cases, hey, you've still got the original film there. If anything this 2016 remake of GHOSTBUSTERS just makes the original all the more impressive because it's amazing how bad this thing is. And no, I'm not sexist or racist. I'm just being honest. I was okay with this film being made but it's really shocking how awful it turned out.

I'm not even sure where to begin in regards to the bad stuff. I guess we can start with the story because there really isn't a story. There's pretty much a bunch of stuff ripped off from the original movies and toned down here. The horror elements are all toned down. The sexism is toned down. There's really no "story" here outside of four women trying to capture ghosts. I kept watching this expecting something to happen but it just never did. Even worse is the fact that the film didn't make me laugh a single time, which gets us to another problem.

The four female leads here are just downright awful. I'm not going to put an awful lot of blame on them since I'm sure they'll all talented actresses but the screenplay pretty much gave them no characters. In the case of Melissa McCarthy, she's pretty much playing the same type of annoying character that she plays in all of her movies. Kristen Wiig was downright annoying, Leslie Jones was even more annoying and Kate McKinnon didn't even register on the screen.

Even the ghosts are downright pathetic and lazy. I use the word lazy because there's just nothing creative about them and once again it just goes to show how wonderful the original film was and they even make the stuff in the sequel seem better. I could go on and on about the awful stuff in this movie. I honestly had no idea the movie would turn out as bad as it did and it really makes you wonder why Bill Murray would refuse to do a sequel for so many years yet he'd sign up for this thing? I'm hoping he and the other cameos were paid quite well.

GHOSTBUSTERS is a film that could have worked and should have worked. I'm really dumbfounded as to what went so horribly wrong with this but just changing the sexes of a character certainly isn't enough to make a film work.

6.8?!?! How is this rated higher than the 1989 sequel?!?

This movie was awful. Like, really bad. I'm a huge Ghostbusters fan, but this was not it. Such a pointless movie to make, terribly acted and I'm pretty sure the rating was rigged somehow. Either that, or people have terrible taste in movies. The other three movies in the franchise were great, but this was horrible. Only thing remotely enjoyable (if I had to choose SOMETHING) was the cameo appearances by some of the original cast. Other than that... ummm... hmmm... cure for insomnia.

And that's it. Don't waste you time. Watch anything else.....