Who you're gonna call? Someone else. By "someone else," I mean female stars like Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Kate McKinnon, and Leslie Jones. Four months ago, I watched the first trailer of this feminine reboot version of the once-popular 1980s Ghostbusters. Every review I read, which were mostly negative on YouTube regarding the sexist topic, and view these hilarious yet stupidly corny jokes, I thought it was gonna be like one of those horrible remakes and reboots (Amazing Spider-Man, Terminator Genisys, Total Recall) made by Hollywood nowadays that nearly stained classic ones. Especially when I called Sony the worst movie studio of all time due to the lack of well-marketed and highly-appealing movies, its over reliance on product placement, and its greedy obsession of making unwanted by-the-number remakes like Annie and next year's Jumanji. I even called this year's GB as one of my worst movies of all time prior to theatrical release. But when Rotten Tomatoes gave it a 73% rating (though audience score is right now 57%) by saying that it was "great", I was confused. What about when the Internet Movie Database gave it a 4.0+/10 rating? Surely, they were exactly what the YouTube reviews have been saying. I said to myself that I would pass on the new GB movie no matter how much Sony keeps promoting it. I've just seen my 1984 Ghostbusters DVD twice as an absolute reminder that it will always be what many people remember the Ghostbusters as. However, during our brief stay in Indiana by visiting Auntie Lily's house last weekend, my sister Christine goaded me into seeing it with her despite my concerns about the negativity being true. I guess that she was trying to let me give it a chance because of what I've been saying to her about how the female Ghostbusters movie is not as bad as the comments on YouTube have been saying.
In my first viewing of it, I was aware that while the jokes given that it is a Paul Feig movie may turn out to be worth laughing out loud at, not every one of them should be taken too seriously. Everything does remind me so much of what I remember Ghostbusters to be like, at least not in a disrespectful way since it is after all a reboot from scratch with no connection with the first two original films. Kristen Wiig, as Erin Gilbert, is one of the female comedy stars I like for playing such a nice woman with an excellent sense of humor because look, she reminds me so much of the lovable Lucy Wilde from Despicable Me 2! She acted like she's having fun interacting with someone like Melissa McCarthy, as Erin's Ray Stanz-like friend Abby Yates. And remember when I thought that Leslie Jones, as Patty Jones, would be so irritatingly annoying because of her stereotypical black woman characteristics? Actually, she doesn't seem so bad, because she actually does make me laugh so hard when she says things like "I don't know if it's a race thing or a lady thing, but I'm mad as hell!" and "The power of Patty compels you!" But the biggest standout of the lady quartet is Kate McKinnon, as Jillian Holtzmann! I think she is the most eccentric and the most likable female Ghostbuster of them all! Love the way she acted like such a goofball while being a brilliant engineer and provider of the ghost-capturing weapons. Especially how she took down all of Rowan's evil ghosts LIKE A BOSS ("You just got Holtzmann'ed!")! The other stars I find okay or mediocre are the hunky yet wasteful Chris Hemsworth (Kevin) and the one-dimensional Neil Casey (GB 2016 main villain Rowan). There are also some fun albeit cheap cameos from the original Ghostbusters, now mind you they are actually characters DIFFERENT from the characters we know and love, like Bill Murray, Annie Potts, Dan Aykroyd, Sigourney Weaver, and of course Ernie Hudson!
Overall, it was actually a fun remake of Sony's horror-comedy blockbuster property even while suffering from the usual remake-is-inferior problems and the so-bad-yet-it's-ridiculously-funny-if-not-completely-forced jokes! It didn't actually end up a franchise-killing abomination like Batman & Robin or Fant4stic! And neither is it one of the turned-out-to-be-awful-in-my-opinion movies that strangely earned good Rotten Tomato ratings (Noah - 76%, Indiana Jones 4 - 77%, Superman Returns - 76%, Piranha 3D - 73%, etc.)! Perhaps it wasn't much of a waste of a ticket even if there are other summer movies better than this what is now one of my favorite guilty pleasure movies right up with Angry Birds, Pixels, Battleship, and the Transformers movies! Let's see if its $46 million opening will allow Sony to begin this ever-expanding cinematic universe of the Ghostbusters (having their own production company called "Ghost Corps") they've been planning after their Spider-Man Cinematic Universe was killed by The UN-Amazing Spider-Man 2! So who are you gonna call?
GHOSTBUSTERS (either male (old) or female (new))!!!
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