Ah, the Critic's usually unflappable wisdom seems to have abandoned him. I wasn't going to touch the Ghostbusters remake with a ten-foot pole, not after all the unnecessarily controversy drummed up by MRA weasels and internet trolls regarding the all-female cast. And you were wrong, internet; some of the women in this movie were funny, particularly Leslie Jones and Kate McKinnon, who plays an eccentric fusion of Egon and Peter Venkman. The script, however, is a poorly-written copy of the first film, and the gags have nothing approaching its organic chemistry. Kristen Wig. who's comedic talents I have always doubted, does her usually thing and simply flails about, mumbling awkwardly. Melissa McCarthy was okay as a Dan Aykroyd stand-in, but she also doesn't incite any laugh-out loud moments. Chris Hemsworth as a hair-brained secretary was a good gag, one that perhaps gets repeated too many times. Two other weakness of the film are its terrible CGI (the original didn't have great special effects, but these ghosts look like they popped out of a video game) and its underdeveloped villain, played unconvincingly by Neil Casey. The whole thing seems to lack a decent outline; someone wanted to reboot Ghostbusters, because Hollywood loves existing properties, and performed their duties in the most rote manner possible.
And really, did Ghostbusters need rebooted? Like fellow eighties classics Robocop and Conan the Barbarian before it, Ghostbusters basically hit its concept out of the ballpark the first time. It's not as though the premise is that great--a bunch of humorous idiots come together to bust some ghosts. If the makers of the new flick had just stuck with that, instead of copying the original note for note, then perhaps you would be reading a different review. But who knows; my wife says that I am incapable of enjoying things, so I likely would have found some fault with it. C'est la vie, say the old folks.
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