Ghostbusters [Review by Haus]

You know what’s the worst part of growing up? We all know too damn much about life now, about people, about the world. There’s no room for a truly resonant movie to block-fill your worldview, to teach you not just something, but almost everything at once. Sure, we take something from movies — film can still be a god of the gaps — but those gaps are getting awfully small.

I was not quite seven when the original Ghostbusters debuted in theaters, and into my double-digits I was watching it quite often on VHS. (Kids: It’s an app.) And because of this, it’s hard to describe in rational adult terms what that film was to me: The scale of it all, and the decidedly non-zero fraction of my social understanding that came straight from that movie. The outsize significance of even little details.

I say that to say this: The new Ghostbusters, in a sense, is doomed from the start. Even if Paul Feig and the four-woman team knock it out of the park, nail every zinger, dig deep with the heroics and pull all the right strings, it’ll still never hold a candle to the original in my mind or probably anyone else’s. (Whether or not it was deeply unfair to equip the all-female cast with so sturdy a glass ceiling right from the get-go is a topic for a more nuanced discussion. We basic here.)

With that mandatory throat-clearing out of the way, here’s what you’re waiting for: The new Ghostbusters is not a pure rip off, it’s not a straight up remake, and it’s not a sequel. It stands alone, a sort of CGI-heavy reimagining of the original. There’s some heavy homage here and there, the de rigeur oldster cameos, and the basic premise is the same — but the villain, the plot, and the characters, all are quite different.

I posit that it’s actually impossible to watch this new Ghostbusters without constantly comparing it to the first. And I say this with some authority, because I actually came close to doing a controlled experiment here: I saw this new one with my dear friend CMAC, who somehow, and despite not living under a rock, has never seen the original.  As she explained afterwards, even she couldn’t help comparing the two, wondering if each scene was there because, as a remake, “it had to be.” I rest my case, Feig: Everyone keeps a running tally.

And I do think Feig sensed this, because he’s steered his remake away from mimicry and driven wedges of difference wherever he could. “This film stands alone!” — you can almost hear his pleas. And it does stand alone. But at what cost?

Truth is, some parts shouldn’t have changed. Like the fact that in the original, New York was really and truly in peril and, despite the fact that they were locked up, the city absolutely needed the Ghostbusters; like the slow, methodical build to a unique and ultimately heroic conclusion; like the fact that ghosts could be trapped and stored in a containment unit;like the love story. Feig doesn’t just change some things, he tinkers with pretty much everything. For instance, there’s a whole new reason behind the uptick in ghost sightings, a much more earthly cause that’s quite a product of our times. But that reimagined spectral origin story also strips away the spooky supernatural suspense, and the result, plot wise, is muddy — and with decidedly lower stakes.

The CGI is colorful and wispy, but it takes a focused director to keep the graphics from taking over and Feig doesn’t have the minerals for that. So expect to succumb to a tsunami of nicely-rendered specters with none being particularly memorable at all.

But in a result that should surprise no one given their rich SNL chops, the all-woman Ghostbuster cast is good. They’re funny when they need to be, they have good chemistry, and they do carry this film. Kristen Wiig plays Erin Gilbert, the straight-laced respectable professor; Melissa McCarthy is Abby Yates, a wacky if vaguely-credentialed pseudoscientist (who’s actually one of this actress’s more restrained characters). Kate McKinnon is downright riveting as the kooky, goggle-sporting Jillian Holtzmann, a live-wire, in-your-face mad scientist sort; and the talented Leslie Jones does right by Patty Tolan, a subway ticket taker who (for reasons unclear) joins the team. It’s tempting to draw lines between these four and Peter Venkman, Ray Stantz, Egon Spengler, and Winston Zeddemore — in some ways they’re mappable, and in others, not. Feig did a good job avoiding the Top Gear trap here, though wouldn’t it perhaps have been nice to make Jones’s character one of the core three? Also, the characters have fertile backstories but nothing much is done with them in the frenzy to strike cool poses, crack wise, draw more CGI, and avoid stepping on ghostly toes of thirty years past.

Meriting a paragraph all his own: Chris Hemsworth absolutely steals the film as the pretty-but-dumb beefcake secretary Kevin. His hiring is easily the funniest part of this whole loud thing. He dances through the credits, if you’re into that. (Everyone should be. Dude rules.)

In all, Feig does a fairly impressive job from a decidedly disadvantaged start. This new Ghostbusters reminds us what was so great about the original, but politely takes a different path. I can even see some parts of it as proto-iconic (looking at you, McKinnon’s Holtzmann and Hemsworth’s Kevin).

But while it’s a fun ride and I’ll watch it again, it still just doesn’t play on anywhere near the same level as the first.  This film’s not going to be everything to anyone, kid or not. That’s a shame, but at least it’s one we all saw coming.

Haus Verdict: Will always invite comparisons, and generally lose them. It’s not the original, and was never going to be, but the new Ghostbusters stands on its own as a funny and quirky — just not iconic — summer CGI movie. 

Ghostbusters opens Friday, July 15. 

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