My Ghostbusters 2016 Review

[*PhilHos*]

Okay, so I took my wife and daughters to see this movie over the weekend and I thought I'd share my thoughts as a superfan of the original. This may be a long post so I'll put a summary at the end if you're lazy or incapable of reading more than 2 sentences at a time.

Let me preface by saying when they announced a new GB movie I was more than thrilled; I was ecstatic. BUT, then I heard they were doing an all-female cast and I was perturbed. Why? I don't care if they cast women, but why must they ONLY be women? Eventually, they cast the women and I was less perturbed. I can't say anything negative about any of them prior to seeing this flick. I'm not a McCarthy hater (mainly because I haven't seen her in anything unfunny; then again, I've only seen in her in a couple of movies (she's not been in the chick flicks my wife has made me watch), Wiig has been funny in all the stuff I've seen her in and Iv'e found McKinnon and Jones funny on SNL. However, I was still worried that this would be an anti-man woman-loving "family" flick. Let me state at this point that it was NOT. GB16 is NOT openly anti-man. If you look closely, though, you will see that every man with a speaking part is either a jerk or a complete imbecile (not just Helmsworth character is so stupid, you wonder how the heck are they even still alive), except for Ernie Hudson's cameo, but that came right before the credits rolled. With that said, i still didn't get the sense the movie was anti-man.

Getting back to the timeline, the first trailer came out and I laughed a couple of times so I was cautiously optimistic it'd be a decent comedy. Turns out, I was probably the ONLY one outside of those that worked on the movie that thought so considering it was YouTube's most dislike trailer EVER. The 2nd trailer comes out and I still feel the same: it looks like it might be a decent movie. (Regardless of the trailers, I WAS going to see this movie; I am a super GB fan after all).

Fastforward to July 15th and I'm on my way to the theater.

How was the movie, you ask? Well, the movie is okay. I laughed a few times (note: the humor is sophomoric and juvenile), I cringed twice (there is a queef joke and a shot to the crotch), but I was entertained for the duration of the movie. I was not bored at all. Make no mistake, this is no classic, this is NOT a great movie, but it is okay. The story was not great and was way too derivative of the original and the damn PKE meter looked like a stupid kid's toy and don't get me started on the new Ecto-1, but they kept the sound effects (which I LOVE) for the most part and the 4 Ghostbusters were pretty funny. If I wanted, I could easily go through and nitpick this movie to death, but I'm not. It was okay and 2 out of my 3 girls liked it (my oldest two ages 15 and 11; youngest is 8).

Should you see this movie? Well, that's entirely up to you. Let me help to clarify things by stating this: if I had to rank GB properties, it would go thusly: GB, GB2, GB2016, Real GB, Extreme GB, Slimer and the Real GB.

Or, let me put it this way: I would say this movie is about as good a movie as Pixels was. Now, I like Pixels and enjoyed it even though I know it's not a good movie. I liked GB2016 even though I know it's not going to be close to a classic.

Hope that helps people who were on the fence about seeing it and feel free to ask any questions and I'll do my best to answer them.

And remember, don't cross the streams (something that was never said or played any part in the new movie).