This Ghostbusters is not a remake (in which
the same characters do the same things) or a sequel (in which the same
characters do different things) but a reboot. It has the same name and the same
overall structure but different characters that do different things. For
example, in the first Ghostbusters (1984), the crew look for office space and
stumble upon an old fire station in Tribeca, New York. The place is a piece of
junk in a terrible neighborhood but it is thankfully cheap enough for them. In
the reboot, the new crew looks for office space and is shown the same fire
station. This time they are told it costs $21,000 a month in rent.
It’s a good joke and one this movie tells
many times. However, doing so reveals the weirdness of the movie. See if you
can wrap your head around this. In the 2016 version of Ghostbusters, the 1984
Ghostbusters don’t exist. That in and of itself is normal for a reboot. What is
weird is that the reboots wrings every callback opportunity possible out of the
earlier film. Some examples: The Ghostbusters logo is “serendipitiously”
created by a graffiti artist, the original cast shows up in cameos and quote
the original’s catchphrases, and a giant stay puff marshamallow man is fought
in the climatic scene. The movie treats these situations as if the movie knows
about the original film, but the characters in the 2016 version don’t know
about the original film. So there’s a disconnect between what the audience
experiences and what the characters experience because the audience remembers
the thing that is being called back in a scene but none of the characters in
that scene remember it. Like I said, weird.
It is fun to hear all these callbacks but I
would posit that it hurts this movie’s ability to be a stand-alone movie
because to understand these many jokes one would need to see the original
movie. A viewer who has not seen the original would probably be confused as to
why the movie would make such a big deal about a callback moment when the
characters themselves, by definition, can’t. To draw a contrast, take the movie
“Creed.” That was a reboot too in a way. But the new character existed in the
same time universe as the original so when it made callbacks it made sense for
the characters to feel the weight of them. Those moments do not work in this
reboot (if you take the time to think about it) and that is this Ghostbusters
oddest and biggest mistake.
It’s an odd mistake because this movie
probably didn’t need the callbacks and nostaligic jokes. This movie is a
“Bridesmaids” reunion, a movie that will be a classic once I convince everyone.
It is directed by Paul Feig and stars both Kristin Wiig and Melissa McCarthy.
Kristin Wiig continues to impress. She has been cast in this movie as the
straight man (she is a scientist at Columbia trying to distance herself from a
ghost book she co-wrote with Melissa so she can gain tenure) so she has not as
many opportunities to be funny but that doesn’t stop her from having the
movie’s funniest moment in a restaurant freaking out in front of the mayor. She
should be funnier more times but this is not really her fault, as I will
explain later.
Melissa McCarthy continues to be not as
funny to me as she apparently is to everyone else. I would compare her to Zach
Galifinakis. She rose to stardom in a very well written supporting role, which
has been hard to translate into mainstream comedic stardom. What seems to
happen, just like Zach, is that most of her funny moments come about not
through chracter revelations but from non-sequitor asides, quite a few of which
distract from the narrative flow of the movie. There is one more thing and this
actually does happen to do with her gender. Melissa McCarthy is fat but won’t
do fat jokes. This distinguishes her from every male of ample gut that calls
himself a comedian. Her writers won’t do it also (here that is Katie Dippold
and Paul Feig) and it leads to some unbelievable situations, like in “The Heat”
where she is cast as the sexually vigorous and attractive one opposite to
Sandra Bullock of all people. Unfortuately for our politically correct culture,
fat jokes will always be funny because (obesity epidemic due to subsidized corn
syrup excepted) it is fundamentally true that they reveal character (unlike say
racial jokes or misogynistic jokes). And jokes that reveal character are and
will always be the best ones. Melissa McCarthy’s pride ignores this to her own
peril as a comedian. It is about time for her to own it and join the big boys
of comedy (Rodney Dangerfield, John Candy, John Belushi, Zero Mostel, Jack
Black, Jim Gaffigan, Jason Alexander, to name but a few).
The revelation in this movie is Kate
McKinnon. She is hilarious. I’ve known her a little bit from Saturday Night
Live (she is probably going to blow up big time impersonating Hillary Clinton
this fall) but have never seen her in a movie. She reminds me of the early
freewheeling zaniess of Jim Carrey in a 5’5” frame. Making her more fun is that
she is in charge of the really dangerous equipment. She does a dance at one point
with blowtorches. Classic McKinnon.
The fourth is Leslie Jones. She fills the
Ernie Hudson role and then some. In fact she shows up earlier, has more jokes,
and says more smart things (she reads lots of nonfiction and knows all sorts of
things about the city) than Hudson ever did in the original. It doesn’t matter.
This Ghostbusters, unlike the first, is getting shit for not giving the black
woman a role as a scientist, as opposed to the (apparently undignified) job as
an MTA worker. I’m not sure what Ernie Hudson was doing in the first
Ghostbusters. He shows up three quarters of the way through and then doesn’t
really do anything in it besides postulate about the end-of-the-world, but if
he was absent from that one and Leslie Jones (who is only here because of
Ernie’s presence in the first) was absent from this one, the only thing missing
would be the liberal outrage.
(I’ve been trying to figure out why this
sort of controversy irks me so much. I can only ascribe it to what I would
consider an unfounded and pathetic sense of entitlement amongst those that are
outraged (not just black people of course, I remember Mahnola Dargis of the
NYTimes complaining about it too.) Its unfounded because to tell a good story,
even one with paranormal elements, it helps to set it in a realistic context. I
think it is fair to say that a black person in NYC in 2016 is more likely to
work for the MTA than for Columbia University as a scientist. If that is a
problem, it is a problem for the real world. It is not a detriment to
Ghostbusters to merely reflect reality. That is to say the solution to this
problem should be to fix it in the real world, not insist that a movie project
falseness. Its pathetic because (and I shudder to accuse people of this) it
insists that a person’s self-esteem comes from how they see other people who
look like them are portrayed in movies. It should be a basic thing taught to
all five-year-olds that movies should not dictate how one feels about
themselves. To say Ghostbusters, of all movies, made you feel less than, well,
that’s just, it’s just one of the saddest things I could possibly hear someone
say.)
The largest difference between the original
and the reboot has to be the extraordinary progression of digital effects in
movies. The comparison is a good reminder that being able to do anything with
computers does not necessarily make it better than the old cheap way. The special
effects in the original were crappy but they had thought in them and quite a
few of them were jokes. In the reboot, the effects are so big that it is damn
near impossible for them to be comedic. There is a big action sequence at the
end in which the ghosts of New York City past attack the four ghostbusters. It
is notable for its lack of laughs while being great to look at. Roger Ebert
made the observation that the original movie was an exception to the general
rule that big special effects can wreck a comedy. He explained:
“Special effects require painstaking detail
work. Comedy requires spontaneity and improvisation; or at least that’s what is
should feel like, no matter how much work has gone into it…rarely has a movie
this expensive provided so many quotable lines.”
The suits in charge of the reboot have, like
so many recent movies, used big budget spectacle, nostalgic throwbacks, and
political correctness (where are the ghost hookers of Time Square in the
climatic battle? Why are they fighting pilgrims instead?) as a crutch in the
place of character, creativity, and originality. The tragedy is that all the
ingredients for greatness are here but they have not been given space to breathe and
grow. In the meantime it’s good enough. Perhaps the sequel will do a better job
at making the apocalypse work for the comedy and not the other way around. At least
there should be less callbacks.
