Ghostbusters (2016) - On the All-Female Reboot: Starting the Discussion

I'm still wary to write about the Ghostbusters reboot. I wrote this post originally in 2017, and in 2018 I still feel like it's a sticky subject. Attitudes towards this movie are so often vitriolic and rooted in personal issues. I believe that the personal is the political, and my review is definitely one deeply informed by my own feminism married with my preferences in regards to film, but I think it's important to address greater issues in filmmaking and how they reflect the world around us. Everyone's opinions deserve respect but when they are purely a result of a misunderstanding of power balances in the world, it's really upsetting, and that was a lot of my problem with the first wave of reviews for the movie. Let's focus on discussing the cheap jokes and lazy plotting; let's not look at all at ideas about women in comedy. I'll make more points about female reboots when I get to writing about Ocean's 8, which I saw recently and loved.

Here is the other necessary disclaimer: I do not have the same nostalgic connection to the original Ghostbusters that most vocal detractors of the 2016 remake have. I have never seen it beginning to end, and the parts that I have seen were not really my thing. I’m sorry. I’m putting it out there. The humour was a little too broad for me, in general, and it didn’t pack the same punch as it might have had I seen it as a kid. I’m aware of that. It did mean that I went into Paul Feig’s remake with a totally different attitude, and that was the attitude of not being particularly interested in the concept and knowing I probably wouldn’t care for the movie, but really wanting to see a female-led action comedy kill it. 

Other warning signals: I don’t really have any existing love for any of the main cast, and somehow in spite of being a queer woman on the internet, I missed the thing where everyone fell in love with Kate McKinnon. It kind of happened without me noticing. I appreciate Melissa McCarthy’s grip on the comedy landscape, as a fat woman myself, but I also don’t particularly connect to her stylings; kind of how I feel about Kristen Wiig as well. All that said, the rage and incessant virtriol directed at this movie before it was even released pissed me right off, and a lot of it stemmed from defensive “it’s not because they’re women, it’s because it’s unnecessary”. I understand the sentiment, but it’s also unnecessary that the film landscape of “classics” had to be such a male dominated field in the first place and excuse me for appreciating representation, particularly for women who are usually marginalized even by the feminist majority. 

All precursor discussion aside, I…was kind of meh on this movie. There were some elements that were just so fantastic that I felt deserved so much more love - particularly the motivations of the villain, who was essentially the voice of Nice GuysTM - but others that felt really underdone for me. The chemistry between the cast felt choppy and unbalanced, and for every standout (I thought Leslie Jones did fantastically with her part, despite the bits of it that fell into stereotype and did her a disservice) there was weirdness. So much of the humour - I can’t comment effectively on whether this is just due to the source material - just felt stale and cheap and easy and far to slapstick for me, at least. Likewise, weirdness for weirdness sake doesn’t always just work for me, sorry Internet Lesbian Icon Holtzmann (also: it doesn’t necessarily count as representation just because the actress is a lesbian and word of god establishes the character as one too; the actress herself, sure, but I can’t really comment on the character there. I felt a little shortchanged). I laughed here and there - I liked the jokes with Chris Hemsworth’s character, especially as a subversion on a trope - and I overall had a good time with it, but it didn’t feel fresh. It felt really, really tired.

I think women can and should carry blockbusters and comedies and action films. I can’t wholeheartedly embrace a lot of classics purely because of the attitude towards or exclusion of women (I spoke about this when I reviewed the 1982 version of The Thing). Hell yes, I want to remake every movie with women in the lead. [Here's a section of the review you might be able to tell I wrote in 2017, but feels important to leave in play] I don’t care about the Oceans movies either, but of course I’ll watch that female driven remake. I watched a review of this that I otherwise found to be fairly even keeled where a main critique on the movie was that every man depicted is either stupid or evil, to which my response was…yeah, and? It’s turned into this issue of personal offense, when its a response to a systemic issue - one a lot of people might not be looking for, but one that’s definitely an endemic throughout the history of cinema.

You're allowed to not like a movie because you don't think it's funny, or because you think it was poorly written, or because you think it was an unnecessary reboot. It's just important to consider where those thoughts come from. On deep consideration, I'm pretty sure that this movie just didn't deliver to me in terms of a balance of plot and character. But if you went into this movie determined to not like it, or if you find yourself putting clauses on your thoughts about the movie about how ridiculous it all is and how we shouldn't have to put women in everything and we should let things be, you should be prepared to question why that is.

As soon as I start talking feminism and representation, things get heavy. Overall, I found the movie to be kind of light silly fun, but I didn’t like it as much as I wanted to, considering what it was. There were so many cool elements worth exploration, but also a lot of weak and frustrating ones. Definitely a worthwhile discussion and a movie worth seeing, but…I feel like it needed a little more time in the oven.

Rating: 4/10