Ghostbusters Is An Imperfect, Joyous Ride

It’s almost redundant to discuss it at this point: From the moment it was announced, the Ghostbusters reboot starring Melissa McCarthy, Kate McKinnon, Kristen Wiig, and Leslie Jones was viciously assaulted by the slime of humanity. The actors have been subjected to prolonged Internet abuse, the trailers have been downvoted into oblivion, the director has been threatened with assassination. The atmosphere around this film is insanely toxic for a goofy story about comedians fighting neon spirits on the streets of New York City.

So let’s not address the backlash any further, because it’s absurd. The original Ghostbusters was built on a simple premise: Take the best and brightest of the world’s comedic superstars and drop them into a mainstream action sci-fi spectacle, albeit one with an oddly in-depth mythology, courtesy of the genuinely ghost-obsessed Dan Aykroyd. It’s a movie where a man has a weird ghost blow-job dream and then two people turn into dogs and a giant marshmallow man stomps through the heart of Manhattan. There is nothing especially profound about the 1984 Ghostbusters. It’s a fun movie that’s quick on its feet, and it features a cast of talent that is literally at the top of its game. It’s also a movie that was practically made to be a franchise: Give us a Ghostbusters team in Boston! In DC! In Shanghai or London!

Tragically, that promise was cut short, because Ghostbusters 2 is very bad and so the franchise has laid dormant since 1989, barring a few cartoon spin-offs and one awful fan-servicey video game. Harold Ramis’ death in 2014 laid to rest the ever-present specter of a Ghostbusters 3 that would have featured septuagenarians running around in huge nuclear backpacks, and Bridesmaids and Spy (Have you seen Spy yet? It’s perfect) director Paul Feig soon stepped in to resurrect the series with a cast of very funny ladies.

And don’t despair: The movie is incredibly funny. The lackluster trailers have done the 2016 Ghostbusters no justice whatsoever. The laughs come fast and furious; Feig and co-writer Kate Dippold have given the film a loose and limber structure that allows the cast to flourish and improvise in ways that give their interactions a spark that leaps off the screen and electrifies the audience. There are moments in the film where the plot almost seems trivial to the proceedings, because just watching these girls hang out, eat pizza, and make fun of their dopey secretary is a blast in and of itself.

But there must be a plot, because this is a $144 million blockbuster on which the fate of a billion-dollar company rides, and so we find ourselves following Wiig’s Erin Gilbert as she reunites with her old friend Abby Yates (McCarthy) years after a falling-out. In return for ceasing the embarrassing publication of a nonfiction ghost textbook the two co-authored, battered cynic Erin agrees to bring true believer Abby to investigate a haunted mansion that has been brought to her attention. From here, you can probably imagine where the movie will go: Erin is shocked by an encounter with a spirit, and the team goes into business.

Feig and company aren’t really interested in surprising you. Instead, the movie has almost a comforting atmosphere; it’s clear where it’s going, but the ride is half the fun. And what a ride it is. Along for the Ghostbusting adventures is the film’s MVP, Kate McKinnon as the impeccably coiffed Jillian Holtzmann. McKinnon is a consistent scene-stealer and well-kept secret on Saturday Night Live, but here she takes a huge leap for the big leagues. McKinnon’s Ghostbuster is a willful weirdo, a rubber-faced lunatic who takes pleasure in the paranormal antics like no character we’ve seen in this series before. She seems to have sexual chemistry with everything onscreen: Wiig, fire extinguishers, ghosts, oxygen. It’s enough to make you wish the actress hadn’t locked down at least four more years on SNL with her portrayal of Hillary Clinton, because Hollywood could use more movies with her anarchic energy.

Chris Hemsworth’s Kevin, a well-meaning nincompoop who serves as the team’s secretary, is also a scene-stealer, although he doesn’t quite steal the movie from the women at its heart. Anyone who has seen Hemsworth in any of the Marvel movies knows he’s a comedic genius just waiting to break out of being an action hero, and he doesn’t disappoint here. Andy Garcia plays the mayor of New York City, and has maybe the best line in the whole damn thing. Andy Garcia should probably play the mayor of New York City in every movie about New York City until the end of time.

As if this cast wasn’t already good enough, the team is completed when Leslie Jones, as MTA employee Patty Tolan, sees a ghost in the subway and alerts the Ghostbusters to a mysterious energy that is increasing the frequency of paranormal exploits throughout the city. There was a minor outcry upon the release of the film’s first trailer that feared Jones’ blue-collar background was a racist stereotype in a film full of physicists and scientific mumbo-jumbo. Those people can rest easy, because Patty is an integral part of the team, a New York City history buff who grounds the foursome. She’s far more significant to the plot of the film than Ernie Hudson’s Winston Zeddemore was in the original, and far funnier as well. (Sorry, Ernie, it really wasn’t your fault.)

In terms of the villain and his evil scheme, the film doesn’t reach a level higher than adequate. Neil Casey’s Rowan is interesting in terms of a meta-commentary on the film’s audience (He’s a social outcast burning to avenge himself on the world that ignored him), but the script wisely chooses to focus closer on the dynamic between the main characters and less on Casey’s rather one-note nerd revenge. It’s not inconceivable that more compelling material was left on the cutting room floor, but as is Rowan is simply there. The girls must stop him, and the climax is predictably overwrought, but in the end it functions. Everything about the finale is grounded in the estranged friendship between Abby and Erin, and in its last moments, that bond and its conclusion ring true, even as we roll our eyes at the CGI mayhem. Wiig and McCarthy are given less to do comedically than their scene-stealing costars, but their friendship gives the movie its beating heart.

The story is also shot through with a heady sense of nostalgia, but funnily enough these moments almost serve to derail the story entirely. At one point, Bill Murray appears, sleepwalking through an extended cameo, and it’s an incredibly painful moment. The new Ghostbusters is finest when it is being exactly that, new, and Murray gets in the way of that in a big way. The other original cast cameos range from tolerable (Dan Aykroyd) to excellent (Sigourney Weaver, Ernie Hudson) to touching (Harold Ramis), but the best thing that can be said about the film is that when a certain iconic green blob shows up at the climax, I didn’t even notice he’d been missing from the rest of the film. Ghostbusters doesn’t need these trappings and references; its greatest moment is a fully original slo-mo McKinnon action walk in the third act. Set to an orchestral version of the classic Ghostbusters theme, it shines with hazy wonder. When Feig and his cast escape from the weight of the Ghostbusters legacy, the movie is utter joy in a bottle, a glorious slice of repurposed iconography for a new generation of young men and women to absorb and idolize. Maybe there’s a lesson to be learned from that, fanboys: Ghostbusters isn’t yours anymore. Get over it.