The prologue of “Ghostbusters” features an angry female ghost who’s been locked in a basement for centuries; its finale sees our heroes shooting a rampaging, skyscraper-high male ghost in the crotch.
Its girl-power message is not subtle.
Overall, though, Paul Feig’s (“Spy”) reboot of the 1984 classic is a goofy, big-hearted romp. Is it as good? No. Is any remake as good as the original? Almost never (the Coen brothers’ “True Grit” notwithstanding).
Melissa McCarthy, Kristin Wiig, Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones make a formidable comic team in their own right — though McKinnon steals the show as oddball physics geek Holtzmann (the Egon, if you will).
Wiig plays it relatively straight as Columbia professor Erin Gilbert, a former ghost-hunter; she’s reunited with paranormal scientist Abby Yates (Melissa McCarthy) by a haunting at a city landmark.
Soon they’re setting up shop above a Chinatown restaurant, after learning rent on their first choice, the original’s iconic firehouse, is $21,000 a month (ah, modern-day New York — or, at least, simulated New York, since much of the film was shot in and around Boston).
Leslie Jones joins the fun as an MTA employee well-versed in obscure city history, and if you’ve got a problem with her being a loud black woman, her character’s got a take: “I don’t know if that was a race thing or a lady thing, but either way, I’m mad as hell!” Enough said?
Stepping into the Annie Potts role is Chris Hemsworth as their hilariously dim-witted receptionist, hired entirely for his looks, which felt to me like a haters-baiting move. (We dare you to call us sexist!)
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a movie so shaped by its own internet backlash. The foursome must take down a creep (Neil Casey) who thinks himself an unrecognized genius and plans to loose the undead upon the city; “it’s always the sad, pasty ones,” says Wiig’s character. They gather around a YouTube news report, reading comments like, “Ain’t no bitches gonna hunt no ghosts.” These are blithely dissed, and then the women go test their ghost-hunting gear in an alleyway, blowing stuff up with great satisfaction.
Haters might also note that nearly every original cast member shows up for a cameo: Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson, Potts, Sigourney Weaver. (It’s easy to imagine the late Harold Ramis riffing with McKinnon’s character.)
Feig dutifully utilizes 3-D to spew ectoplasm at viewers, though his showy, overlong finale would be better without a stale Stay Puft Marshmallow Man joke. His screenplay is also too indulgent of rambling awkwardness between McCarthy and Wiig. But I liked the way it allowed female camaraderie to trump snark: “Your momma,” snaps Abby, immediately followed by, “No. I think the world of your mom.”
That it’s sometimes less zingy than huggy will make this “Ghostbusters,” I suppose, an easy target. Personally, the thought of girls everywhere seeing coveralls-clad female scientists saying, “Who cares what anybody else is saying about us? We know what we’re doing!” got me a little choked up — which definitely never happened in the original.