Who you gonna call? Ghostbustiers?

By Jay Stone

If there’s something strange in your neighbourhood, who you gonna call? Paul Feig, apparently.

Feig is the director of a series of hit comedies that feature funny women, i.e. Melissa McCarthy: Bridesmaids, The Heat, Spy and now the remake of Ghostbusters, a mostly unnecessary new version of the 1984 film about a bunch of offbeat guys who rid New York City of floating ectoplasm with a combination of steampunk science and ironic smirking.

This time, the offbeat guys are women, which, in the neighbourhood of Hollywood, is something fairly strange. There was a lot of on-line hysteria when this casting was first announced — Internet commentary is sort of like living inside a Donald Trump speech — but the results are probably as good as can be. That is to say, Ghostbusters would be mostly unnecessary even if it starred men.

As it happens, it gives work to four worthy actors who wring the maximum amount of humour out of this rather overwrought supernatural comedy. You can’t blame Feig for the over-the-top special effects that drag the second half of the movie into big-budget overkill — it was probably a studio decision to show off whatever advances in computer technology that let filmmakers turn the Stay Puft Marshmallow man of 1984 into the giant wobbly building-crusher of today — but it is worth wondering what a female director might have done with the project. However, that’s probably too much to ask.

So to summarize what we have so far: an all-woman remake that’s approximately the same movie and wears its feminist credentials lightly. This is not Ghostbustiers, although the temptation to make that joke must have been overwhelming.

The story is a combination of wise guy joshing around and some gently frightening monsters that might limit the audience to the over-10 crowd. Kristen Wiig, a great subtle comedian, plays Erin, a serious scientist (we meet her discussing how to combine the Theory of General Relativity with quantum theory) who once co-wrote a book on ghosts. She now disowns the idea, but she’s being dragged back into it by her co-writer and former friend Abby (McCarthy) who is working with engineering expert Jillian (Kate McKinnon) on equipment that will capture ghosts.

The fourth member of the team comes later, but in the meantime, the main pleasure in Ghostbusters is watching Wiig play off McCarthy, who has become the pre-eminent movie comic of her generation. She’s brassy and funny, but she’s somewhat hamstrung by the role of Abby: McCarthy is the mistress of the unconventionally vulgar, but Abby is such an eccentric character to begin with that McCarthy has nowhere to take her but further along the same path. One longs for the deadpan restraint of Bill Murray, although when he does show up, in one of several cameos from the original group, he proves to be so restrained that there’s nothing on screen but a faint, fond memory.

McKinnon is less familiar to me (Saturday Night Live is on past my bedtime) but the screenplay by Feig and Katie Dippold does her no favours: Jillian has no moments to shine and McKinnon spends most of the film on the sidelines, twisting her face into various expressions of dopey intensity, as if to establish her offbeat bona fides.

The real revelation is Leslie Jones, another SNL veteran, who plays Patty, a subway employee who joins the group after she sees a blue neon monster floating in a tunnel. When the ghost busters — dressed in their familiar jumpsuits and carrying the same electronic flame-throwers from the original — finally corral the snarling ghost, it escapes into a subway car headed for Queens.

“He’s gonna be the third scariest thing on that train,” Patty says with a lifetime of Manhattan street wisdom in her voice. I smiled gratefully for the first and last time in the movie.

In a note of post-feminist reversal, there’s also a role for Chris Hemsworth as Kevin, a hunky but preternaturally stupid receptionist whom the women hire because he’s so, well, hunky and preternaturally stupid. It’s the kind of role that busty attractive women have played for years in men-only comedies, but the movie turns Kevin into such a ditz — he’s so stupid that when he hears a loud noise he covers his eyes — that the comedy degenerates into something from a bad burlesque skit.

This is all told in 3D, which mostly means that when the characters are slimed by regurgitating spirits, the stuff pretty well falls into your popcorn. It is all part of what is known as summer entertainment, and if you stay through the credits, you’ll see many hints that we haven’t seen the last of it. Who you gonna call? Not me, please.

THE EX-PRESS, July 18, 2016

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