Let's be honest for a second, I have been extremely negative towards this film in the past few months, it's marketing has been utterly abysmal, with a series of really shit trailers and TV spots, not to mention Fall Out Boy's raping of the original Ray Parker Jr song. That would have been bad enough had Paul Feig and Sony not started insulting everyone, and the hard left feminist war machine not gone on a full scale ad hominem rampage against anyone who dared be critical of this so very progressive movie. But the movie's out now, and I have watched it, and I'll be honest, I thought this movie was going to be complete shit, but I was wrong.
This film opens in a way that surprised me, while clearly ripping off the library scene from the original film, the Mansion scene here actually wasn't bad, it had a spooky atmosphere to it and establishes that this film is a lot slimier than the original. Things do however go downhill as we are introduced to the new crew of Ghostbusters; Melissa McCarthy's Abby Yates, Kristen Wiig's Erin Gilbert, Kate McKinnon's Jillian Holtzmann and Leslie Jones's Patty Tolan, who are all cartoons. As I expected I would, I took a bit of a liking to Holtzmann, who, while still being a cartoon, had the most character of any of them, even if her wacky inventor persona is very obvious, it's not obnoxious, and I like the wacky inventor trope. Abby and Erin probably have the least personality of all of them, Abby is Melissa McCarthy doing her funny fat girl routine again, with an obsession with Chinese food, and Erin is your underdog with a feely backstory. Patty is everything the trailers would have you believe she is, the big, loud, street smart black friend. While none of them really had any significant depth on their own, and were complete cartoons, it wasn't annoying, if anything it was more cringe worthy than annoying, and they had a lot of energy between them, so it wasn't as boring as I was expecting, at least with the crew. Chris Hemsworth's Kevin was a bit too brain dead for me, personally, I know what the joke is with him, but his stupidity wasn't endearing, it was just stupid, and Erin's lusting for him is really, really cringe worthy. perhaps the character with the most unrealised potential in the film is its villain, Rowan was never really given an explanation as to why he's a genius engineer and physicist with a menial job as a hotel worker, and his backstory and motivation really could have been expanded on; in his character I saw an opportunity for a much more sympathetic villain, but I assume his character was meant more as an insult to the film's detractors/ hardcore projection of Paul Feig's insecurities. Speaking of Paul Feig, his political motivations shine through in this film's supporting line up, most notably the male characters, who are all either Arse holes or idiots to some degree, a lack of knowledge on the delicate subject of Feig's beliefs would make this easy to brush over, but as it stands, it's kind of blatant. What's weird however is that the film's only notable female supporting character is a really unlikable character, she's a bitch, and she's easily the most grating side character in the film, I don't really know what good little puppy Paul Feig was thinking to be honest, it's not very progressive is it. The Film's plot is very in keeping with the original, Ghostbusters are attacked by ghost, set up base in a less than optimal location, catch a ghost and get famous, the film even ends with a showdown with a giant puffy white thing, while it's clearly not the most original formula ever, it's inclusion of a villain actually gave the plot more focus, and the energy the crew has kept things moving at a good pace, weirdly I can't really say the film bored me, even if it's probably done serious damage to my spine.
That's one of the film's most glaring issues; the cringe, while the film did actually have some funny moments, a sizable number of the jokes really don't work, the Leslie Jones crowd surf scene from the trailer was really bad, in fact a lot of Leslie Jones' jokes were cringe worthy, Abby's Chinese food addiction was cringe and so was Erin's lusting for Kevin, but Holtzmann, while still being cringe worthy at times, was easily the most endearing character in the film. there was a lot of stupidity in this film, and not good stupidity, awkward, poorly handled stupidity, Kevin's a good example, but all of the characters have moments of vapid idiocy, a certain Erin scene from the trailer comes to mind, and when the film tries to be witty, it has a habit of failing really hard, again, just coming across as vapid and awkward. Which isn't to say the film was never funny, while I never laughed out loud, and it's certainly not remotely as funny as other comedies I've seen this year like Grimsby or Deadpool or even Lazer Team, its energy never really let the mediocrity of a lot of its jokes drag it down. Yes the film made me groan a few times, but they were far less frequent than I was expecting, and a particular scene I was really not looking forward to was not even in the movie, which was very relieving, it was shown in the end credits however, which was a good place to put it. Another thing the trailers painted a bad impression of was the effects. At first, it was tolerable, the stupidly vibrant neon ghosts floating around in dense clouds of particle effects like vapour and sparks and arcs, for the first couple of ghosts it's something I could get over, but as the film entered its final act and there were ghosts everywhere in a big battle, it just looked like a mess, the blatant fakeness of its CG completely ruined whatever illusion the already poorly handled effects were able to muster, and as I said at the beginning, this film has lots more slime. Bigger isn't always better, and in an effort to make the ghosts look cool, they've just made them look really fake, pulling back on the vapour and brightness would have made the ghosts look a lot better. Other than being really fake looking however, and being really overdone, the effects aren't really that bad. The film also breaks its own rules from time to time, I won't go into details here, but one in particular bugs me, the film establishes that a proton gun can't kill a ghost, it can only weaken and contain it, but the film throws that rule out completely in the final battle when the proton guns start straight up killing the ghosts, and they start playing with their more nonsensical gadgets like a Proton grenade and a machine that sucks in and literally shreds ghosts, it's a nitpick, but it's a buggy one.
All in All this film caught me off guard. Make no mistake, this film is not brilliant, its jokes are often cringe worthy and awkward, its effects are over done and fake looking, and its characters are flat cartoons. But I went in expecting it to be a shitty, lazy propaganda film, and I came out having seen something that was, at least for the 2 hours I was watching it, surprisingly enjoyable for what it was. I'm glad I was wrong about this film, and while I think the damage has already been done with its marketing and feminist pedestalising, this is a film that isn't a complete waste of your time.
*Addendum
While I stand by what I wrote in my review, regarding my expectations and shit like that, I want to make it clear that this film isn't good. It was better than I thought it would be, and, admittedly, hoped it would be, but it's still a sloppy comedy. While I would discourage going into this film with any kind of bias, regardless of where you swing on that issue, subjectively, this isn't a film I enjoyed to any meaningful degree, and I would not recommend it.
No comments:
Post a Comment