"Ghostbusters"

"GHOSTBUSTERS" (GHOSTBUSTERS: ANSWER THE CALL) (12)

D: Paul Feig

Sony/Columbia/Village Roadshow (Ivan Reitman & Amy Pascal)

USA/Australia 🇺🇸 🇦🇺 2016

116 mins

"Comedy"

W: Paul Feig & Kate Dippold [based on "Ghostbusters" by Dan Aykroyd & Harold Ramis]

DP: Robert Yeoman

Ed: Brent White & Melissa Bretherton

Mus: Theodore Shapiro

Melissa McCarthy (Dr. Abby Yates), Kristen Wiig (Dr. Erin Gilbert), Kate McKinnon (Dr. Jillian Holtzmann), Leslie Jones (Patty Tolan), Chris Hemsworth (Kevin Beckman), Andy Garcia (Mayor Bradley), Charles Dance (Harold Filmore)

I have so little respect for this film, I won't even be publicising it with a poster or its trailer (which quite fittingly and deservedly received a record amount of dislikes on YouTube). The reason I have so little respect for this film is because it itself and everyone involved in it seems to have so little respect for the original 1984 film, which still holds up after 30 years and didn't need to be remade. This isn't just the corporate greed of Hollywood at work though, this is virtue-signalling in the worst possible way. The media have been pushing the myth that there aren't enough strong characters for women in the movies, so they decided to take a 1980's classic, still adored by millions for a gender switch.

The trouble is, 1984's Ghostbusters was hilarious, the humour in this remake is so pathetically unfunny it resorts to fart jokes and ladyparts humour. Excuse my while I sew my sides back up.

The original film also had a sly dig at bureaucracy, with the film's main villain being a smarmy suit from the Environmental Protection Agency. The villain in this is ALL men. Everywhere. Because men are scum. Seriously, all the men in this film are painted as chickenshit, dumb or simply evil for the sake of being evil.

The market demographic for this movie is clearly Buzzfeed readers, which is fine, but if you're gonna remake stuff, leave the fucking classics alone. This isn't about feminism, or misogyny, it's about leaving our childhoods the fuck alone... and it doesn't wash that "the original film is still there to be enjoyed", when a remake tries to deny all existence of said original film. I may have been onboard with this had these female characters been daughters/nieces of the original members, but it's actually asking us to ignore that the original 1984 film happened. Ugh!!! As far as I'm concerned, there is no Ghostbusters 2016, only Zuuuuuuul.

It's worth noting that this is the only film on my website to score less than zero out of ten.

-1/10