Ghostbusters

Ghostbusters

Starring Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Kate McKinnon, Leslie Jones

Directed by Paul Feig

The Story:
Dr. Erin Gilbert (Kristen Wiig) is close to receiving tenure at Columbia, but she finds out her old friend Abby Yates (Melissa McCarthy) is selling a book the two wrote together years earlier about the paranormal, and she feels if they find out about it, she will lose her tenure.  She goes to Abby and Abby's assistant Jillian Holtzmann (Kate McKinnon) in hopes of having her pull the book from sales, but instead the three investigate a haunting where they capture a ghost on camera, causing Erin to return to her old love of hunting ghosts and joins Abby and Jillian in their exploits.

In the New York subway, MTA worker Patty Tolan (Leslie Jones) discovers another ghost, and joins the team, along with blonde himbo Kevin Beckman (Chris Hemsworth) as their idiotic secretary.  The girls achieve fame when they capture a ghost at a rock concert, but are told by the Mayor (Andy Garcia) to not be so public, and dismisses them as frauds in hopes of not inciting a mass panic.

Meanwhile, nerdy loner Rowan (Neil Casey) is hatching a plan to get back at those who've picked on him throughout his life by bringing ghosts back to the modern world and is revealed to be the person behind bringing the previous ghosts to our world.  Fully equipped for a war with the paranormal, the Ghostbusters must battle both the undead and public opinion in order to save New York and the world.

The Synopsis:
In 1984, Ivan Reitman directed "Ghostbusters" and featured the talents of Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson and the late Harold Ramis, and the film was a huge success.  A sequel, television cartoon series, action figures and video games saturated the market, and to this day it's heralded as a comedic masterpiece.
So when "Bridesmaids" director Paul Feig decided to reboot the franchise with an all-female cast, it was met with unmitigated scorn and ridicule.  The trailer is currently the most disliked trailer on YouTube, and diehard fans of the original refuse to even see it.  There's been countless rebooted series, but none received the vitriol "Ghostbusters" did, and while I wasn't one of those slinging the mud, all the negativity around the film caused me to not really have any strong desire to see it.

When the film finally made our second-run theater, I decided that $3 was enough to see the film, because if I didn't like it I wouldn't have wasted $7 - $10.  Maybe it was my extremely low expectations, but I found myself really enjoying the film, and I laughed more than I did for "Sausage Party."  The comedic quadrangle of Wiig, McCarthy, McKinnon and Jones is unparalleled, and I found myself enjoying it so much that I would even go see it again, and this is coming from someone who highly valued the original classic.

There have been some rebooted films where you clearly see the director giving no cares to its source material, but not so with Paul Feig's "Ghostbusters."  He gave careful detail and paid great homage to the original, and had the blessing of many of the original cast members and production members.  The film was produced by "Ghostbusters" director Ivan Reitman and star Dan Aykroyd, and the film featured cameos by Aykroyd,  Bill Murray, Ernie Hudson, Annie Potts and Sigourney Weaver.  Harold Ramis's son also appeared, as did a golden bust of Ramis's head in homage to the actor.  This wasn't done just to make easy money off an already-established franchise, but it was a real labor of love, and it shows in every aspect.

The effects of the film are spectacular, as it's pretty much a lavish CGI spectacle but done in a way that made it very realistic and appealing to the senses as well.  There's been some awful use of CGI in other films, but here it's very polished and beautiful to see, as well as sometimes utterly terrifying.  The mannequin who follows Leslie Jones's character is creepy as all get out, and the final huge ghost is simply unnerving (even Patty commented on it, "What part of small and friendly did he not understand?").

The story is your classic revenge tale, with a lowly janitor who's been picked on his whole life hatching a plan to bring the dead back to the world and leading them on a cleansing of society.  It's not the strongest story you could tell, and it gets forgotten in the grand scheme of things, but it's the way the Ghostbusters come together and establishes themselves as real heroes.

The best aspect of the film is the brilliant acting of the five main leads.  They all clearly had a blast working together and loved the film so much that it allowed the viewers to get comfortable and enjoy the ride along with them, not to mention their insane on-screen chemistry and how well they worked off one another.

Melissa McCarthy is pretty much amazing in anything she does, and here she once again outshines in her comedic timing and punchlines ("We just gave a ghost a nuke, we should probably run.").  She doesn't make as many overweight jokes as she has in previous films, which was something I really appreciated because it was starting to grow stale, and her physical comedy was laugh-out-loud.

As the voice of reason for the group, Kristen Wiig had a harder time being funny, but her deadpan delivery made even her most mundane sentences funny ("That stuff went everywhere by the way.  In every crack.").

Kate McKinnon's Holtzmann is your classic brainiac unhinged inventor who invents more ways to capture ghosts, but results more in the girls hurting themselves.  She also delivers some classic lines ("Just try saying no to these salty parabolas!" as she ate a can of Pringles.  After she smashed a guitarist's guitar, she says "Sorry, I can't buy you another one.").  She was pure comedic gold and wonderfully crazy.

Leslie Jones shows why she's one of the funniest up-and-coming comediennes in the business as street-savvy Patty Tolan, who also serves as the voice of reason for the audience ("Okay, room full of nightmares," she says after discovering a room full of mannequins).   Pretty much every line she gives was met with hilarious laughter from the audience.

Chris Hemsworth turns the tables on the traditional "dumb blonde" female as the dumb blonde male, someone who doesn't know how to work a phone, doesn't know the name of the business he works for, and continually walks into walls, but the girls hire him mostly for his physical appeal, which is even mentioned by other characters in the film ("Nobody called for a Clark Kent strippergram!" a NYC police offer tells him).  Still, his goofy likeability transcends any annoying pretenses his character could give.

The Summary:
Sometimes bad reviews are justified, and sometimes they're not.  With "Ghostbusters," it's one you shouldn't write off based on what other people have said, because you might miss out on a comedic film.

The Score: A-