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Is 'Ghostbusters' As Good as the Original? No. But It's Still Pretty Damn Fun.

By Rebecca Pahle | Film | July 15, 2016 |

By Rebecca Pahle | Film | July 15, 2016 |


To all the Internet manbabies convinced that Paul Feig’s Ghostbusters reboot will be the worst thing ever to hit theaters on the basis of RUINING MAH CHILDHOOD: Sorry not sorry, you big dopes. It’s actually a damn fun movie. I know, I know.

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To all the Internet manbabies who instead say, “bwuh bwuh bwuh, but what if I don’t like it because of the trailer, why do feminist bitches have to crawl up my urethra all the time?”— literally no one ever said thinking Ghostbusters doesn’t look good necessarily makes you sexist. Britney Spears wants you to shut up.

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Now, for the most part, we’re all liberal hippie Michael Jackson enthusiasts SJW assholes here at the ‘jibez. So—hopefully—seeing as I am surrounded by like-minded individuals, I will not need to go into too much depth recapping how the vitriol against this movie has been distinctly gendered in flavor. We’ve been over it already anyways. If you have any more questions/comments/complaints, feel free to send them via post with a SASE to PO Box Up Your Own Ass.

We good? Are the children gone?

Splendid.

So here’s the deal. Ghostbusters. It’s a very entertaining movie! It is not a perfect movie, but considering the state of summer 2016 so far, “doesn’t make me want to light my hair on fire” is pretty damn good. Instead of Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, and Ernie Hudson, we get Melissa McCarthy, Leslie Jones, Kate McKinnon, and Kristen Wiig saving New York City (though the ‘busters in one scene eat Papa John’s, and WHAT SELF-RESPECTING NEW YORKER, I ASK YOU etc.) from a massive spectral threat. The villain this time is not Zuul but the completely human and alive Rowan North (Neil Casey), who invented a machine that can, for all intents and purposes, create ghosts.

Rowan North is like if Reddit became a person, except without the cursing or rape threats. (PG-13, y’all.) He does not have a neckbeard, physically. But he is a neckbeard, spiritually. He’s a bullying victim turned bully, a man who thinks his intellect entitles him to obedience and respect from people he believes to be inferior to him in every way. When he doesn’t get it, he lashes out. He has definitely used the word “sheeple,” and not ironically.

Rowan makes a few comments to the tune of “oh, you women” (“You shoot like girls!”), and there’s a scene where dialogue was slightly tweaked as a reaction to early criticism. But, for the most part, Ghostbusters doesn’t get too meta. These new Ghostbusters aren’t “women in a man’s world.” They’re just… women in the world. They know what they’re doing. Their gender is rarely spoken of by the other characters in the movie, as something that would prevent them from going out and kicking some ghostly ass. It’s kind of refreshing.

As with its predecessor, Ghostbusters is funny as hell. For Christ’s sake, it’s Wiig, McKinnon, Jones and McCarthy, plus the guy who directed Spy and Katie Dippold, one of the writers for Parks and Recreation. It was going to be funny. A quick aside on McKinnon: I don’t know where I was on the Kinsey Scale before seeing this movie, but I’m sure as shit at a different place on it now. McKinnon’s Jillian Holtzmann, the weirdo tech genius of the group, is (to quote Kristy’s review) “one-part Egon earnest nerd-thusiasm with two-parts Ian Malcolm (from Jurassic Park) sex appeal.” I feel like a changed person for having seen it. God opened a door for me, and I walked through it. She spends half the movie eyefucking people. It is everything you wanted from the trailers and more.

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Feig’s Ghostbusters isn’t as good as Ivan Reitman’s. It drags somewhat during the setup-heavy first 20 minutes, and the climax is a bit overstuffed—I preferred the low-key “four guys on a rooftop” of the original to the city-spanning action we get here, which is more typical of 21st century blockbusters. The original Ghostbusters had a spark to it that this one just doesn’t, because it’s a concept that we’re all so familiar with by this point. And, speaking of comparisons, the new Ghostbusters doesn’t help itself with the constant references, cameos, and callbacks to the ‘84 film. Acknowledge your source material, fine, but you really don’t need to work “I ain’t afraid of no ghosts” or “Who you gonna call?” in there if doing so brings your movie to a distracting standstill. Cameos for their own sake aren’t funny. Cut it out! (Literally and figuratively.)

That said, Ghostbusters is still a very fun, solid action comedy—even the 3D is good, and that’s not something I normally go in for. There’s no ghost blowjob, as in the original, but there is a scene where a ghost gets shot in the dick. Fun times for the whole family!